The Ares Trail | You are my Sunshine
The Challenge | You are my Sunshine
The Ares Trail
Add a short description explaining your project.
It is December 2033 and your team has just landed on the surface of Mars, the first humans to do so. It's been 8 months since you left Earth's orbit and you're eager to get going collecting the scientific data that will enable humanity to explore further in the future. The problem is that the launch window to return to earth is four hundred martian days (sol) away in march 2035 and the lander that will return you to the spaceship is 7,000km away from your landing location in the shadow of Olympus Mons, in the loire valles. During the day you will collect your scientific data while during the night, you will travel to the next location. If something breaks, you'll need to fix it and everything needs maintaining to keep it at peak performance.
Enact Science and keep your crew alive as you traverse the martian surface on your 400 Sol journey between landing and the launch window to return to Earth.
The Ares trail was inspired by sources like the old game Oregon Trail and the recent book/movie, The Martian. It is a game written in java where you manage a team of astronauts on their journey across the surface of Mars to reach the lander which will return them to the orbiter.
Future development includes disasters such as dust storms, customisable journeys across the surface, martian landmarks, solar day length calculation, adding NASA cache drops and more accurately representing the effect of the martian dust upon solar panels.
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.