İTÜ FEZA Team Came First in Turkish Stage of NASA International Space Apps Challenge

Our team FEZA ranked first in its locale with its project DeepArtemis at the Turkish stage of NASA International Space Apps Challenge, one of the leading global competitions, and obtained the right to present its project to NASA and represent our country at global level.

Our students and graduates, who prepare for competitions by developing projects on subjects NASA works on every year, impress with their achievements. İTÜ FEZA Team ranked first in its locale with its project DeepArtemis, and was qualified to present its project to NASA and represent our country at global level.

Space Apps Challenge, one of the leading global competitions, is an international hackathon organized by NASA every year since 2012. It is organized in order to create applications and platforms for finding new ideas to solve environmental problems and make progress in space technologies.

In this competition held simultaneously in different cities, in which teams compete, thousands of people try to bring innovative solutions to problems encountered on Earth and in space within the 48 hours given to them. Teams chosen by the local jury obtain the right to compete at the global final and their project has the chance to be reviewed by NASA. The challenges of the competition are determined by NASA and its partners every year.

 

“DeepArtemis: a project which brings classic and modern together”

İTÜ Physics Engineering third year student Beyda Altunbaş from the FEZA team that chose “Putting the ‘Art’ in Artemis” challenge of the “Create” category explained the project details as follows: “We all know Neil Armstrong’s famous words when he first stepped on the Moon: ‘That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Artemis space mission consists of three phases and in the first phase, a manned flight to the Moon is planned. The most special aspect of this mission for me is that a woman astronaut will set foot on the Moon for the first time. A lunar base will be established and the collected data will be used for sending humans to Mars. The mission will result in ‘even more than one giant leap for mankind’. DeepArtemis, which we designed in order to create awareness on a subject that concerns humanity so much, puts creativity into visuals that belong to Artemis space mission with the help of deep learning-produced style transfer based on the style analysis (color and pattern information) of famous paintings. By also adding details of the mission to the resulting visuals, we aim to facilitate accessing information and inspiring everybody we can reach.”

The other member of the team, İTÜ Computer Engineering graduate Umutcan Karakaş added the following: “DeepArtemis is a project which brings classic and modern together. We used DeepArt to transfer the style of a famous painting to a photograph related to Artemis space mission. By this technique, we make a static photograph more dynamic and attractive. After this process, we cut a piece of the generated image and inserted the original piece into the place of the missing part. The aim of this action is to create an intertwined piece of art, which enables people to engage with Artemis project through a painting they are already familiar with. Last but not least, in order to create an informative poster, we added a brief text related to the mission. DeepArtemis explains the Artemis mission and detailed information on the mission with creative visuals.”

 

Famous paintings used in the project:

1) “Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh

2) “Scream” by Edvard Munch

3) “Bravo, Bravissimo” by Leonid Afremov

4) “Abandoned by Winter” by Leonid Afremov

5) “Van Gogh Never Saw Eiffel” by Aja Trier

 

For detailed information about NASA International SpaceApps Challenge:

https://www.spaceappschallenge.org/

https://2020.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/create/putting-art-artemis/teams/feza-1/project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwf-95a3cE8