“Learn, Launch, Lead”: this is the theme that was chosen this year by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to launch its worldwide call for the Space Apps Challenge, the largest annual hackathon on the planet dedicated to space and science.
Fans of the exploration of the universe and of the new opportunities generated by the Space Economy were able to take part live in Turin - the only Italian city hosting a local Space Apps event this year - on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 October. I3P, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino, hosted the ninth edition of the local event in the city, funded by Regione Piemonte with resources from the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and organized in collaboration with the ESA BIC Turin incubation program, managed by I3P.
The Turin hackathon was supported by sponsors and partners such as Argotec, RINA, Thales Alenia Space, and Women In Aerospace Europe (WIA-E). Among the international collaborations involved in the initiative were the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), with which I3P has been working for years to support the creation and growth of start-ups in the space sector.
67 participants of many different nationalities and educational backgrounds accepted the invitation to take on the challenges of the initiative, which varied in terms of themes and objectives, filling Agorà Hall of I3P with their passion, resourcefulness, and inventiveness. The Turin hackathon officially began at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday and continued uninterrupted for 24 hours, including through the night, until the projects were delivered to the local organizers. The 17 solutions were pitched to the evaluation jury, and the award ceremony was held for the most promising teams, which could one day evolve into truly innovative start-ups.
The winning teams of Space Apps Turin 2025
The first place in the local hackathon in Turin was won by the NyanGer team, composed of five members: Arda Çankaya, Giulia Sironi, Quynh Anh Nguyen, Riccardo Canciani and Yiğithan Yorgancılar. The group chose to tackle the challenge titled "Build a Space Biology Knowledge Engine", which consisted of creating a dynamic dashboard that used artificial intelligence and other tools to summarize a series of NASA publications in the field of biosciences and allow users to quickly explore the impacts and results of the documented experiments.
The NyanGer team then launched the BioSearchX project, a research assistant built with Google Vertex AI and Gemini that allows users to ask scientific questions, receive concise insights, generate follow-up questions, and even visualize data through automatically generated graphs. By transforming vast and complex data sets into an accessible and conversational interface, BioSearchX supports faster insights and decision-making for future lunar and Martian explorations. Thanks to the innovative value of the project, the group of young creators was awarded the first prize of €1,000 sponsored by RINA, multinational group of engineering consulting, inspection, and certification.
The second step on the podium was taken by the Agrolabs team, composed of four members: Achintya Gupta, Harsimran Singh, Krishanu Kumar and Mehran Nazarifazel. In response to the challenge "NASA Farm Navigators: Using NASA Data Exploration in Agriculture", the team developed AgroMinds, an AI-based smart farming platform that aims to revolutionize agricultural decision-making through the integration of cutting-edge technologies. The platform is designed to bridge the technology gap for farmers, enabling data-driven decisions that increase crop yields, reduce waste, and optimize operations.
The Agrolabs team won second prize in the Turin hackathon, worth €500, sponsored directly by I3P through the ESA BIC Turin program, with the opportunity to undertake a free pre-incubation path in I3P to further develop the project from an entrepreneurial perspective and, possibly, join the ESA BIC Turin community of innovators in the future.
For the special prize “Argotec SpacePark Award”, the sponsor Argotec chose two teams deemed equally deserving: NyanGer, already winner of the first prize, and HorizonAI, composed of five members: Alessandro De Stasi, Davide Antonio Miglietta, Gabriele Paladini, Gabriele Tebano e Leonardo Antonio Riola. The HorizonAI team began by choosing the same challenge as NyanGer, but ended up proposing a different project on the theme of Space Biology Knowledge: the MindVault digital platform, initially designed as a web app for NASA researchers, which could one day be developed as a paid tool for companies, offering an AI-powered service for rapid search and extraction of highly accurate information from extremely large data sets, including documents.
The special prize equally awarded by Argotec to the two teams consists of an exclusive experience: a guided tour of the SpacePark in San Mauro Torinese (Turin), a hub of aerospace technology and innovation, where satellites are designed and built and from where operations are carried out once in orbit. Participants will be taken on a unique tour that will take them from the Clean Room, where satellites are built, to the technological heart of the central Hub, and finally to the Mission Control Center, from where space missions are monitored. A journey behind the scenes of space innovation, to discover how a mission comes to life: from the construction of the satellite to its daily monitoring in orbit.
The special prize “Thales Alenia Space Award” was assigned by the jury of sponsor Thales Alenia Space to the team The Dude Forest, composed of three members: Ege Onder, Ismet Kaan Yilmaz, and Kaan Yilmaz. The group tackled the challenge entitled "Your Home in Space: The Habitat Layout Creator" by creating AstraCAD, an interactive design tool that makes space architecture accessible through education and simulation. Users can define mission parameters - such as crew size, duration, and environment - and the system calculates living volumes and functional areas. An integrated AI-based assistant analyzes the design in real time, providing guidance, warnings, and suggestions to ensure that layouts remain within safety limits.
The award presented by Thales Alenia Space will consist of an exclusive visit to the company's site in Turin, one of the few places in the world where modules for astronauts are built. The winners of the award will have the opportunity to enter the clean rooms, discover how modules for commercial stations and lunar missions are produced, observe the test ground for lunar and Martian rovers, and visit the mockup of the future European module orbiting the Moon. It will be a day in the life of an astronaut, allowing participants to see firsthand how closely Turin is linked to space.
At the end of the event, I3P thanked all participants, mentors, judges, and sponsors of the local hackathon who contributed to its success, hoping that the hackathon may have sparked the creation of new entrepreneurial ventures in the constantly growing Space Economy sector.
