The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will have their third annual International Space Apps Challenge on April 12-13, 2014 in New York City. The main event will be bringing together all of the tech-savvy citizens, scientists, entrepreneurs, educators and students to aid in solving the challenges related to space exploration as well as social needs.

There will be a total of 40 different challenges organized in over 100 locations during the 48-hour period of the 2014 International Space Apps Challenge materializing from the five different themes of Earth Watch, Human Space flight, Asteroids, Technology in Space and Robotics. "Future human and robotic missions to the solar system will require rich, networked communications capacity," Vint Cerf, the internet pioneer and visiting scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California stated regarding the "Bring the Internet to Deep Space Exploration" challenge.

Vint Cerf further stated in the ITBusinessnet.com report that the challenge serves as an opportunity in exploring the ways to sustain the projected planetary and interplanetary communication needs now and in the future. According to the Austrian Tribune report, the participants will be the ones selecting the mode they will use in expressing the theme that could be educational space apps or design for space travel equipment.

However, the participants are required to use only the openly available data that the NASA missions and technology provide. For the year 2014, the challenges will consist of developing a game that allows travel across the solar system moving from asteroid to asteroid, concept designing for "deployable greenhouse" to be used on a mission to Mars and space app designing to give a picture to the positions of the missions that are active in space.

The event has witnessed a steady growth with over 20 Space Apps locations in 2012 and approximately 80 locations in 2013. For 2014, there are approximately 100 sites participating in the event worldwide.

"This is a truly historic event: thousands of people all across the world, under the guidance of one of the most technologically elite organizations on the planet, working together to improve life," Mike Caprio, community organizer for StartupBus and co-organizer of Space Apps NYC, declared. Even though there will be prizes to be given at the event over the weekend, NASA will be focusing on the teamwork rather than the individual winnings.

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