NASA HUNCH SOFTWARE PROGRAM

The Software program is HUNCH’s newest program and seeks to have students work with NASA to build software applications for the International Space Station. Students work on project prompts sourced from crew feedback and subject matter experts to solve real needs for astronauts and the International Space Station.

Each project that the students work on is team based and while programming is a core part of software development, it is not the only component that makes a software product a success. Emphasis is placed on delivering working products at the end of the school year and having teams that focus on software development, design, quality assurance, and user testing. Solutions to these projects are intentionally open ended and meant to mirror real life software product development processes.

Projects are also designed to expose students to range of different types of software development. Examples this year included tracking items on the space station using IoT devices, building a mobile web application to allow an astronaut to have a personalized mission timeline, to software to help astronauts identify spacecraft parts using cutting edge technologies such as augmented reality.