Sebastian Kowalczyk, a third-year student of the Silesian University of Technology in the field of aviation and space engineering, achieved a spectacular success and won with the TECHMECHAN HackTeam in the largest European hackathon NASA Space Apps Challenge.

NASA Space Apps Challenge is an international, prestigious competition organized by NASA that brings together science, technology and art enthusiasts from all over the world. This year’s edition took place at the beginning of October in Stalowa Wola. More than half a thousand people took part in it, and the prize pool amounted to over 100 thousand zlotys.

Sebastian Kowalczyk, a student of our University, took part in the TECHMECHAN HackTeam with four colleagues - pupils of Technical School No. 1 in Tomaszów Mazowiecki: Hubert Krawczyk, Kamil Kotynia, Marcel Klimczak and Mateusz Sepkowski.

This group achieved spectacular success, winning first place in the “artistic” category. Their winning design, which caught the attention of the jury, was based on the use of modern VR (Virtual Reality) goggles.

“This is an innovative use of VR goggles and a game project for astronauts who are long in space,” explains Sebastian Kowalczyk. – “The idea was created by brainstorming in our team and by Agnieszka Szczotki, MSc, who was a mentor on behalf of Analog Astronaut. This project combines advanced technology with a creative approach to visualizing space issues.”

Sebastian Kowalczyk is currently in his third year of studies in aviation and space engineering. As he admits, this choice was quite obvious to him, because he was already interested in astronauts and aviation as a child. The success in Stalowa Wola was not so obvious for him and his colleagues.

“We didn’t think about such a success, let alone a global nomination,” he adds.

During the global evaluation, all nominees will be reviewed by a team of experts from NASA and the Space Agency 2024. These votes will select the best teams, which will be called the “Global Finalists.” The Global Finalists will be announced via NASA Space Apps social media and will be available in November spaceappschallenge.org 19, 2024.

Photo Podkarpackie Centrum Innowacji