Space Apps 2019 Finalists Submission: AstroTech

What is the NEOSSat Challenge?

The NEOSSat is a dual-mission microsatellite designed to detect potentially hazardous Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids and track objects that reside in deep space. At Space Apps 2019, a competition hosted by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) we took on the NEOSSat challenge. More info regarding the challenge can be found here: http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/events/2019/space-apps-2019.asp.

Who are we and what is AstroTech?

We are the finalists from Toronto of NASA and the CSA’s 2019 Space Apps Challenge. Our team is composed of John Salib, Mustafa Khan, Aditya Mehrotra, Ankit Batra, Victor Qian, and Ahmed Mosehli.

Our goal was to detect and visualize asteroids moving in space using data from the NEOSSat. We call our solution: AstroTech.

AstroTech employs Edge Segmentation and False Colour Images in order to detect and effectively visualize asteroids in space.

Using Open CV’s Canny Edge Detection, we made a program to detect the edges of each of the distinguishable objects in two dataset.

Additionally, NEOSSAT’s raw grayscale images are used to generate a series of false colour images using the viridis colourmap (a perceptually uniform colourmap). They are then combined sequentially into a video. This allows the viewer to easily browse through the NEOSSAT dataset visually.