The innovative jet-pack idea was top ranked at the hackathon contest held on April 22-24 at the New Man's Business Accelerator in Skopje, as part of the global Space Apps Challenge competition organized by NASA.
The winning Macedonian team will compete for NASA's global prize, part of which consists of attending the rocket launch from its space center. The team, with its jet-pack project, has offered a truly innovative solution for this challenge.
"What we wanted to achieve is to make something different from what everyone imagines when the term jet-pack is mentioned, i.e. the use of fuel for its functioning. Also, we wanted to use the latest and the best technology for its full manufacturing and to use the sun as much as possible, as a source of energy for our device," said Goran Jovanovski, member of the first-ranked team.
The second-placed team has created a virtual reality that takes the user a step closer to the Kennedy Space Center. It answered the challenge by creating its Space Route 66 project.
"We've developed an application with an educational and recreational character that enables the users to see how the Kennedy Space center looks like today and how it will look like in the next 50 years," said Stefan Tausanov.
The 'The People's Choice' award went into the hands of the team who tackled the challenge dubbed 'Don't Destroy My Drone', by creating an app that provides terrain specifications and information on zones where it is forbidden to fly.
The teams are starting their preparations for the global contest, where they will compete in one of the following categories: Best Use of Data, Best Use of Hardware, Best Mission Concert, Galactic Impact, Most Inspirational, People's Choice. They will have five days to work more on the development of their solution and to send a short video aimed at drawing the judges' attention.
The best teams will be granted access to the European Program on Projects' Acceleration, which will help them in the realization of their projects, while the best six teams will have the opportunity to witness the launch of a rocket from NASA's headquarters.
