NASA asking developers to build smartwatch app for astronauts, victor gets $1500

According to the competition rules, the app must have certain features that replicate the current NASA practice of employing laptops and iPads as part of the user interface with the space station.

NASA is planning to recruit freelancers around the world to design the smartwatch app for astronauts. The space agency also included a number of examples of things that need to be viewable on the app, including an agenda-type view of the crew’s Timeline, which is now displayed on an iPad or laptop.

NASA is looking to capitalize on the growing smartwatch trend, and it needs your help to do so. Either way if you have an idea of what a good astronaut smartwatch will be like, head on over to Freelancer for the details where the victor will earn themselves $1,500.

And the smartwatch would offer more than the watch, stopwatch and counter functions of the manual-wind Speedmaster, as classy as that is. Astronaut Jack Swigert used it to keep time while Jim Lovell and Fred Haise carried out an essential engine burn to put the damaged capsule back on a course to Earth.

Announced by NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), which is piloting several such micro-task challenges on public platforms, while major tasks are taken up by its NASA Tournament Lab (NTL). Maybe not, which is why NASA has recently launched a contest on Freelancer. It also informed the potential participants that they can use Samsung Gear 2 as hardware reference to base their designs.

The contest is focused on finding a user interface design, rather than the development of the actual app. Contestants are expected to present their plan in the form of image files.

These functions have to be able to guide an astronaut to the data they require to boost efficiency, deliver data for the astronaut’s actions and also be accommodated in a tiny smartwatch-sized screen.