Garage48 SpaceTech: Integrated Applications. already the second Garage48 hackathon focused on space technology, kickstarted the European Space Week events and brought our space events to a next level. The event which took place on the 3-5th November in Tartu brought together 122 software and hardware engineers, designers and space enthusiasts. 23 different nationalities were counted among the participants including people from as far as Australia, Iran, China and Brazil. On Friday, 21 ideas were pitched of which 13 gathered a team around them and were presented at the Sunday finals.
It is already the second time Garage48 is organising a space tech hackathon. “This year the quality of ideas has grown, the teams are more serious. The winning team consisted of Latvians, who are regular visitors of Garage48 hacks. They showed excellent skills in software and hardware development and it was an honour to announce them as winners,” commented the host of the event and one of the co-founders of Garage48 Priit Salumaa.
The overall winner of the event, iDoBalloon team, built an educational DIY High Altitude Balloon Kit that students can send to discover stratosphere. The runner-up prize went to TeamOnGrid, whose solution enables team tracking on MGRS map during military endurance competitions.
Pauls Irbins, the leader of the winning team, encouraged everyone to take part in similar events: “The whole process was a big challenge for our team because we haven’t been working on such big projects before. In the 48 hours we experienced a lot of positive emotions but also conflict inside the team and very little sleep. That is why mentors and the support from organisers is such an important element to reach your goal by the end of the event. We hope that we are an inspiration to other people to take part of hackathons and build their idea into reality!”
The event was organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and was the kickstart event for European Space Week. The representative of the ministry Paul Liias was content with the outcomes of the event: “The teams and ideas were innovative and novel. Some of the ideas really surprised me that they were built at a space technology hackathon. Totally out of the box!”
The event was also extraordinary because among the organising partners we had two of the main European space focused organisations - the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European GNSS Agency (GSA). “This hackathon has showed - once again - that space unites. It unites people, countries, knowledge and intentions, and the result is always bigger than the sum of its parts. I felt privileged to witness and contribute to the collective creativity and intelligence that was palpable all throughout the event. This is our first Hackathon with Garage48, and we are already looking forward to the next one,” commented Cristina Comunian from GSA. The head organiser of the event Kai Isand marks: “It is a big thing for us that we had the opportunity to bring together two of the biggest space field players to one hackathon. The participants had access to Galileo and Copernicus data, both of the organisations brought a top notch mentor team and will continue to support the teams that continue after the hackathon - all of this added to the success of the event. I think from here the international space field will start having a bigger contribution from Estonia.”
The event had other great partners: ESTCube (taking care of the hardware teams with making sure all the materials and equipment needed is in place and more importantly being present with their expert team tackling any problems the teams had), Milrem, CGI Eesti and University of Tartu.
RAIN MATTERS
Prize: Swag from Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications
Highest resolution rainfall map on the field. Because rain matters and helps to grow your business.
Team: Kaupo Voormansik , Arnel Pällo , Karl Tõnissoo , Martin Valgur, Tanel Jakobsoo , Vahur Varris , Markus Rene Pae, Marie Jaksman, Erik Kulu
Most Fun Team & EST-Cube Special Prize
DroneID
Prize : Space ice-cream made out of stardust by EST-Cube
Identify the unknown flying objects near flight-restricted zones
Team: Merlin-Eliise Salus, Kristaps Straumens, Mostafa Naeem Elsaid, Andres Ehrenpreis, Roberts Trops, Marc Picornell, Rasmus Taavet, Jan De Vries, Indrek Rebane
SatData
Prize: 1:1 Commercialisation consultancy by EBANSpace
A sharing economy platform for satellite data, bringing together satellite and ground station operators. Satellite operators - find a ground station to download your valuable data. Ground station operators - download data and earn rewards in cryptocurrency. Through its platform, SatData will increase the volume of data that makes its way from space to Earth, help to distribute data downloading activities more efficiently and evenly across ground stations globally and decrease the cost of buying data.
Team: Sergey Bushnyak, Kostiantyn Lapchevskyi, Triin Teppo, Henri Liiva, Karoli Kahn
GSA Special Prize
Run Me If You Can
Prize: A dedicated consulting/advisory by Space3ac - the Polish 3 months long acceleration program for start-ups making use of satellite technologies - including the invitation to “Space 3ac Demo Day", scheduled for 22nd of March, and present their idea in front of investors willing to invest in innovative businesses.
TeamOnGrid
Team tracking on MGRS map during military endurance competitions.
Team: Gudrun Vene, Priit Mattus, Kerman Saapar, Lauri Mattus, Aleksei Boris, Rait Arro
OVERALL WINNER
iDO Balloon
Prize: 3000€ worth goods and services to further develop the product, tickets to Startup Day 2017, ESA BIC Estonia SPECIAL PRIZE : Pre-business incubation to prepare one team to enter ESA Business Incubation Centre Estonia accelerator, ESTCube and Tartu observatoorium SPECIAL PRIZE: special astronaut ice cream and Estcube swag + 100h in Tartu Observatory labs
Educational DIY High Altitude Baloon Kit
Team: Pauls Irbins, Andrejs Puķītis, Jānis Dimpers, Kārlis Goba, Gunārs Frickauss, Jānis Ķirpītis, Michael Clormann, Antoņina Vračinska
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