AKIPRESS.COM - A four-member team from Tajikistan’s Oogway Comics was recognized by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a semi-finalist in its global Space Apps Challenge 2021.

The NASA Space Apps Challenge is the world’s largest hackathon, which includes more than 5,000 teams from over 160 countries and territories. During the 2021 contest held October 2-3, teams competed to produce innovative solutions to a range of scientific problems. American Space Dushanbe facilitated participation of 24 Tajik teams this year, after hosting the first NASA Space Apps Challenge in Tajikistan in 2020.

For the 2021 competition, the Oogway team selected a task to create “artfully illuminated asteroids” and produced a comic book and app to educate youth about NASA’s Lucy Mission to explore Trojan Asteroids (remnants of our early solar system). Team members included Timur Sharipov, Malika Achilova, Bahodur Ishonkhodzhayeva, and Sheroz Dzhuraev.

NASA selected the Oogway team as one of only 37 semi-finalist teams. The 10 winning teams will be announced in December. Winners will earn a tour of the United States and attend a rocket launch.