NASA along with International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) will encourage engineers, scientists, educators and programmers to focus their attention on creation of such apps which will assist the space program of the US agency. IBM and NASA will appeal the aforementioned audience at the 4th Annual International Space Apps Challenge (or Hackathon).

The 2015 Hackathon Event

Generally, the event, which takes place for a few days every year, promotes creation of unique and innovative programs for software that can help NASA. Graphic designers, software engineers as well as interface designers take part in this event apart from others. The 2015 event, scheduled to take place from April 10-12, 2015, will bring together non-scientists to help NASA in creating apps and platforms which will help not just the scientists, but also general public.

At first, the U.S. space agency had organized this event in order to fetch ideas and vital inputs from people who did not belong to the agency. Since the first event, Hackathon has grown larger and innovative applications are being created by people from academic institutions and tech MNCs.

IBM to offer cloud services to participants

During the event, IBM will join hands with NASA and will offer its cloud services and technical support to the participants at this event. In order to let participants easily analyse the NASA data, IBM will also offer to the participants, Bluemix platform and other required tools such as Watson, the company’s supercomputer.

NASA-IBM in win-win situation

NASA, in turn, will get access to the opportunity for creating futuristic software that will assist its astronauts on International Space Station with a range of tasks. As far as IBM is concerned, it will have a great prospect of creating and building its network with developers, while also promoting the careers in the field of technology. At the same time, IBM will be able to promote its Bluemix platform among audience.

Awards and rewards to be given

In the joint event, IBM will reward $120,000 in terms of Bluemix services to a total of 30 participants who design the unique and most out of the box app for the space agency. NASA, in the meanwhile, will felicitate the accolades in five diverse categories and fields.