Try Your Programming Skills In Space: DARPA Satellite Programming Challenge

First time accepted submitter null action writes "Want to have your code run on a satellite in space? Take a look at this. MIT Space Systems Laboratory and TopCoder are hosting a DARPA competition to create the best algorithm for capturing a randomly tumbling space object. Contestants in the Zero Robotics Autonomous Space Capture Challenge will compete in online simulations, and four finalists will have their algorithms tested aboard the International Space Station on small satellites called SPHERES. 'In this challenge, you have no advance knowledge of how it will be rotating. We're pushing the limits of what we can do with SPHERES and we hope to break new ground with this challenge,' said Jake Katz of MIT."

Comments

For free?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they just hope someone will come and make a very complex program for almost nothing (up to $1000 travel reimbursment if you go to MIT to see the test).

Re:For free?

[buchner.johannes]

"Develop a program worth millions of dollars, and give it to us for free.

For whom is it worth millions of dollars? Would anyone pay millions of dollars for this program?
It's a challenge of an unsolved problem, probably aimed at academia. If you solve it, you can put it on your CV and use it as a pickup line.

PhDs

[g0bshiTe]

This is Dr Hofstadter, Dr Cooper, Dr Koothrappali, and this is Howard Wolowitz. So NASA wants us to be Howards?

Emulator download?

[capnchicken]

Is there a SPHEREs emulator that you can plug the C code into? I tried reading some of the links and they included tutorials in basic math, physics, and programming, details on the API, and suggestions to download MS Visual C++ Express for coding in C, but I couldn't find where I would plug C code into running this in an emulated or simulated environment for testing. With all of these basics outlined I would have figured there would be an executable or library somewhere to download.

Re:Emulator download?

[ardiri]

http://www.zerorobotics.org/documents/10429/11067/IDE+Tutorial.pdf

seems you do everything online, requires adobe flash for you to run simulations. you edit, compile and execute (simulate) code online.

Re:Emulator download?

[Zentakz]

If I can only access the simulator online, and I can only copy paste my C code into a flash window "IDE", then this sounds pretty dead in the water already. No thanks.

Disclaimer: I'm involved with the project. Coding and project management is online in a JS-based IDE. The flash component is for viewing the results of the simulation in 3D. Also, we're working on adding 2D charts/plots to be deployed before this starts. The editor has evolved from a simplified IDE targeted at high school students and constrained in ways to make the code compatible with the satellite hardware, so be prepared for some limitations. At the same time, there's really quite a lot you can do.

ISS control codes

[jlar]

Fortunately I got a head start when I "acquired" the space station control codes....

chewing gum + string

[Fishbulb]

FTA:

The algorithm must enable a satellite to accomplish a feat that’s very difficult to do autonomously: capture a space object that’s tumbling, spinning or moving in the opposite direction.

So you shoot a sticky mass attached to a tether at the tumbling satellite/mass/whatever, let it wrap around a couple of times, then slowly start increasing tension on the line. Just like catching a fish. You could do that entirely mechanically, including attitude control of the capture satellite, especially if the mass of the target "spinner" is known.

I fail to see how that requires an algorithm or much programming at all, really. Follow the KISS principle.