Astro Sweepers

Problem

Commercial activity in low Earth orbit multiplies debris risk and regulatory paperwork; assessing each object and producing compliance reports takes operators weeks.

Solution

A platform that ingests public orbital data (SPARK 2022, Space-Track TLEs and conjunction messages, ESA DISCOS), scores every object with a weighted risk index (debris legacy, compliance, collision-risk burden, sustainability), computes the Δv needed to lower perigee, re-runs NASA's Debris Assessment Software to show compliance before and after, and auto-fills disposal and end-of-mission plans — paired with a tiered SaaS and licensing business model and long-term debris population forecasts.

Demo moment

Not described in the sources.

Why it stood out

• organizer statedWon the award for the most potential to improve life on Earth or in the universe.Source ↗
• organizer statedAddresses the operational, regulatory and environmental sides of commercial spaceflight, not only orbital physics.Source ↗
• team statedA worked case study makes the value concrete: a single ~22 m/s burn moves an 11-year-old rocket body from failing to compliant, with before-and-after assessment numbers and an auto-generated disposal plan.Source ↗
• team statedAnswers the challenge's business requirement in full: pricing tiers, operator and insurer licenses, and a multi-year financial model.Source ↗
• curator inferenceSpeaks the industry's compliance language, so the output is something an operator would file rather than a visualization.

Lessons for your next hackathon

• Produce the artifact the real user must deliver (a compliance report), not only a dashboard.
• Carry one worked, numeric case study from problem to fix; it proves the whole system in a minute.
• When the challenge asks for a business model, bring pricing and a financial model, not a slide title.