Train Like an Astronaut and Prepare Yourselves for Space Travel with the 'Space Nation Navigator' App
Raise your hands if you had dreamt of becoming an astronaut as a child.
As we grew up and reality started to hit, we’ve come to accept that becoming an astronaut might be just a childhood dream after all. But what if we tell you that now, there’s actually a way you can take your first steps towards accomplishing that dream? All you have to do is download the ‘Space Nation Navigator’ application and complete the game!
Space Nation Navigator (available on Android and iOS) is the world’s first astronaut training app created from a collaboration between NASA, Axiom Space, and Finnish startup Space Nation. The app is filled with a wide range of activities from mind games to physical fitness challenges with the hope to give users insight into what it takes to be an astronaut through a fun mobile gaming experience.
If you’re starting to feel disappointed, you might want to know that the prize you could potentially win from this game is way beyond your imagination. After three 12-week cycles, you could be one of 100 trainees chosen to participate in a space training camp. Out of those 100, 12 will then be chosen to experience an intensive 10-week astronaut training in Iceland involving zero-gravity exercises and parabolic flights. A top-performer will be then selected out of the dozen for an expense-paid space trip in 2019! The journey of all trainees will also be filmed by Space Nation to produce an exciting documentary.
The Space Nation Navigator app eases you into the world of astronauts and space travel through fun mini-games and challenging weekly missions. Keep in mind that the most important elements to keep tabs on as a space cadet are your “Body”, “Mind”, and “Social”. These three things will be the basic theme of all the games, quizzes, and missions you will encounter on the app.
Inside the app, you’ll find four sections — Base, Missions, Profile, and Shop — where you can freely navigate between. In Base, you’ll find a collection of space-related content ranging from scientific articles to educational videos and podcasts. The Missions section is where you’ll find all sorts of games and quizzes to boost your score and catch a glimpse of what astronauts have to deal with. The Profile section keeps track of all your progress including unlocked badges, weekly scores, and player rankings. Finally there the Shop section where you can purchase coins to retry missions that you failed and unlock new challenges.
The fun begins in the Missions section upon your first download with 5 visually-appealing mini games. One of our first missions was “Planet Collector” where we had to walk or run to cover distances corresponding to planetary orbits. The app uses GPS to track our journey with 1 meter on earth corresponding to 1 million kilometers in space. We were tasked with collection Neptune and that amounted to a total of 4.5 kilometers on earth that we had to travel to pass this mission.
The next mission was a Science of Space Quiz where we had to answer questions regarding topics like galaxies, solar systems, and black holes with fun facts popping up after every question that we answer. The Random acts of kindness mission was an interesting one. It tasked us to show kindness towards our fellow humans, whether it’d be volunteer work, helping out a neighbor, visiting the elderly, or simply giving a friendly smile to a stranger, and uploading a picture onto the app. The mission was built upon the idea that astronauts should be able to communicate, build relationships, and share their experiences with others effectively.
A mind mission called Lunar Signal tasked us with sending SOS signals to nearby orbiting satellites for a rescue. This was to simulate how communications in space are more complicated than on Earth since you have to account for signal timing and the orbit of the satellites in this situation. Finally, we had a Space Physics Quiz that was similar to the space quiz but focuses more on the topic of Physics as everything that happens in space is subject to the laws and conditions of space physics.
Take your first steps towards on a journey to visit space with millions of others around the world today by simply trying out the Space Nation Navigator and that childhood astronaut dream might not be as far-fetched as you thought after all.
Space Nation Navigator is available on both Andriod and iOS. You can download them through the links below!
