Mission Cosmos

Inspiration

I’ve always been fascinated by space, and as someone planning to major in aerospace engineering, I wanted to build something that brings that passion to others, especially students who don’t always have access to fun and engaging STEM opportunities. I noticed that many educational resources regarding space were far too plain and boring, and I wanted to fix that through creativity and interactivity.

What it does

Mission Cosmos is an educational website designed to make astronomy accessible for everyone. It features space-themed games, cosmic facts, and a journaling section, allowing users to explore and learn about the universe. Visitors can navigate Mars in the Red-Planet Rover game, dodge asteroids in Astro Run, discover space facts, and record their thoughts in the Cosmic Journal.

How we built it

Most of the coding was done in TypeScript on Github. The games (Red-Planet Rover and Astro Run) were first coded in replit to test functionality before being transferred to Github. The images and logos were generated with AI and added to the project. Github was then connected to Netlify, allowing all the code to deploy smoothly and make the site live for everyone to access.

Challenges we ran into

• Form Submission: Submissions were initially leading to 404 errors. I worked around this by having the form open a pre-filled email in Google Mail addressed to "missioncosmosinquiry@gmail.com".
• Deployment Issues: The site wouldn't deploy correctly on Github Pages which is why I had to connect Github to Netlify in order to publish the website.
• Integrating Fullscreen: Adding a fullscreen button kept sending the entire webpage into fullscreen instead of just the game display. I used AI suggestions to fix the issue so that only the game display would enter fullscreen mode.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Coding two fully playable space-themed games
• Building a journaling feature
• Making the website mobile-friendly (excluding the games)

What we learned

I learned to think like both an educator and a designer while creating Mission Cosmos. I learned how to turn space concepts into interactive activities that actually kept users engaged. I also realized how much work it takes to make a site truly accessible, from getting forms to work to ensuring everything deploys correctly. Most importantly, I learned that creating something meaningful for others means putting yourself in their shoes and being patient enough to experiment and improve until it feels right.

What's next for Mission Cosmos

I want to keep expanding Mission Cosmos to get more people interested in space. I plan to add more games and interactive experiences, integrate real-time space data, give users the option to create accounts, translate the website into other languages to make it more accessible, and collaborate with teachers to make an even greater impact on students.

Built With

• chatgpt
• css
• github
• gmail
• html
• javascript
• json
• netlify
• react
• replit
• typescript
• vite