CHALLENGE

Visualize Space Science

Biological experiments performed in space are critical to scientific discovery efforts, but they are complex to execute and difficult to conceptualize. For example, these experiments must be loaded into rockets, launched, performed using specialized hardware, and (oftentimes) returned to Earth for analysis. This complexity is a barrier to the broad utilization of this data. Your challenge is to create a tool that can generate informative and compelling visualizations of biological experiments performed in space.

Background

Performing biological experiments in space allows us to understand how biological systems—including astronauts—respond to spaceflight. This information is critical to design and execute safe and effective missions to explore the solar system, and can also contribute to important scientific efforts here on Earth. To maximize the value of biological experiments performed in space, NASA has created an open science data repository that allows anyone to access data from these experiments and make new discoveries. However, there are many aspects of spaceflight experimentation that are unfamiliar to most scientists. The most striking feature of spaceborne experiments is the launch and return of samples, but differences between spaceborne and standard terrestrial experimentation abound, including requirements for specialized hardware and remote performance of experiments by astronauts. While structured metadata can capture these experimental features, it does not allow users to intuitively understand an experiment. Graphical abstracts are an increasingly popular way to provide an overview of a study, but they can be time consuming to generate. New, scalable, approaches for the visualization of spaceflight experiments would enable broader participation in the thrill of space science.

Objectives

Your challenge is to develop a scalable tool that can generate informative and compelling visualizations of biological experiments performed in space, including two experiments conducted on the International Space Station—the Rodent Research Reference Mission-1 (OSD-379) and the Rodent Research-23 mission (OSD-665). Think about how your tool can create visualizations that capture the “essence” of these experiments and allow scientists to quickly understand the structure of the data. Make sure your tool accurately conveys information about datasets OSD-379 and OSD-665. It could also make connections between these datasets and other open science datasets within the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR). How can your tool programmatically ingest metadata and data within OSD-379 and OSD-665 and automatically generate visualizations? There are no restrictions on the underlying model for generating visualizations. For example, your tool could utilize generative AI or a more structured approach. What’s most important is the quality of your tool’s output and its potential scalability to other datasets in the NASA OSDR.

Potential Considerations

You may (but are not required to) consider the following:

• Your tool could provide a quick and compelling overview of how an experiment was structured and performed. This overview could include:
  • The number of subjects per group.
  • The treatment applied to each group.
  • Events leading up to the launch of the experiment to space.
  • Events following the return of the experiment from space.
  • Information about similar experiments that have been conducted (e.g., experiments within OSDR that used similar samples, other tissue samples from the same subject, etc.) to provide context for the experiment.
• Consider making your tool interactive.
• Remember that your target audience is a scientist with little to no experience in how biological experiments are performed in space.