Jumping in with both feet: An Open Source NASA Android app

Posted bymrdoornbosPosted inHacking, mobile, take action, Think

I’ve long been a lover of Open Source.  Both from a philosophical point of view, and a quality of software point of view.  When I got serious about Linux in the 1990’s, I spent a lot of time contributing back to the community.  As time has gone by, I’ve been giving back less and less. In 2010, I’ve been working almost entirely commercially.  Sure I do Evadot for free and give all of my content there away as Creative Commons, but it’s really not enough.
I’ve been working on some Android apps for a while and as of today, there are few Space related apps in the Android ethos.  I’ve been following the excellent work of people like Rob Schingler at NASA, and been reading the Oreilly book “Open Government”.  It seems like a good fit to launch an Open Source Android project around the “new” NASA.

Ideally, we, the Android user and developer community should be able to contribute a little each to a project like this.

If you had a clean slate for an Android app with a NASA theme, what would you want on it?  What parts of NASA would you want in your pocket or purse, and always at your fingertips?

A few things I’d like to have with me are:

But that’s just me.  Tell me what you want to see!

If you’re interested in helping, the project page has just been put on Github.  It’s just a skeleton project at this point, so let’s light this candle and get to work!

5 thoughts on “Jumping in with both feet: An Open Source NASA Android app”

  1. Can the video channels list be extended with one of the NASA public channel feeds? QT or WINMED? Can we talk to folks at NASA about the realtime tracker? OSing that data layer or just pub'ing it.Then with tracking and local position, perhaps Alex can help with a realtime and near future satellite sky view..

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    1. I think for source information you're right on in just finding and working with information that's already there. I'm also not above making a separate project should a particular idea become something that should be an app in it's own right.

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      1. I think there is a way to take a picture with compass direction and position for some (perhaps rough) augmented reality for ISS passes and such (need to get a droid)

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  2. Suggestions: An easy way to look up information (“How many people are in space right now?”) An Acronym/Abbreviation list/lookup, timeline viewer for mission information, spacecraft pass viewing information lookup with skycharts/graphics

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