By Dave DeFusco
A multidisciplinary team blending data analytics, programming and creative design led by Donald Haguma, a student in the M.S. in Data Analytics and Visualization, has won the OpenSpace Prize in the NASA SpaceApps Challenge at New York University for transforming NASA’s vast, number-heavy database of Near-Earth Objects into something people can actually see and understand.
Their “Meteor Madness” project—a set of interactive visualizations that show how asteroids zip through Earth’s orbit—is now on display in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Each asteroid carries a hidden story buried in code and coordinates, and Haguma’s team found a way to bring each one to life.
“When we learned that we won, it felt like a dream stretching into the stars,” said Haguma. “But the real prize was the learning. I got to apply my data analytics skills from the Katz School on real NASA data.”
The mission of Haguma and his teammates was simple but profound: to help people see just how close some asteroids come to Earth and to show that with the right instruments, anyone can track them. The team created three interactive tools:
- An alert dashboard that shows which asteroids are getting too close for comfort, color-coded by risk level.
- A small asteroid game that turns real data into a learning experience for kids.
- A visualization inside OpenSpace, NASA’s open-source software used in museums and planetariums around the world.
“The alert dashboard uses NASA’s data on asteroid positions and trajectories,” said Haguma. “But what it didn’t have was an easy way to tell people which ones were a threat, so we added labels, threat levels and color codes to make that clear at a glance.”
OpenSpace—the software now hosting the team’s visualization at the Hayden Planetarium—was a revelation in itself. “They gave us the tools and guidance during the hackathon,” said Haguma. “It’s complicated software, but it lets you fly through space, watch orbits in real time and see how close these objects get.”
For Haguma, who grew up in Uganda, the experience was deeply personal. “As an international student, to be told that NASA is going to showcase your work,” he said, “it made me feel like I really belong here, that this is a place where dreams can come true. You dream up an idea, work hard and people recognize it.”
The team had never met before the hackathon, so their first hurdle was simply finding each other and building a working team. Then came the technical barriers—connecting NASA’s live data streams to the OpenSpace platform in less than 16 hours.
“It was tough, but we helped each other,” said Haguma. “We all were very technical, but I brought the storytelling and visualization perspective I learned in my Visual Design and Storytelling course at the Katz School. Together, we made it work.”
For Haguma, the biggest lesson wasn’t about coding, it was about communication. “This experience taught me that science isn’t locked in labs,” he said. “It lives in people, in late-night code, in coffee-fueled debates, in the thrill of turning data into understanding.”
Haguma and his teammates plan to expand their asteroid project, explore more NASA datasets and bring their visualizations to classrooms and museums. “If other planetariums invite us, we’d love to show it,” he said. “We want to help people appreciate the scale of NASA’s work and of the universe itself.”
For now, their visualization spinning across the dome of the Hayden Planetarium is more than a technical triumph. It’s a symbol of curiosity, collaboration and the power of storytelling in science. While most asteroids are harmless wanderers, Haguma said tracking them gives us more than peace of mind.
“It teaches perspective,” he said. “The universe is vast, but somehow we’ve built tools to watch over our tiny blue home.”
