European
Space Agency

Partnership with STX Next

May 2021 - September 2021

The European Space Agency (ESA) is responsible for planning and carrying out European space programs. Their mission is “to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.” European space programs are dedicated to discovering more about Earth, our solar system, and the universe. Through their activities, ESA aims to advance science, technology, and economic growth. ESA was founded in 1975 and regularly cooperates with space organizations outside Europe.
INDUSTRY
Science and Industry
COUNTRY
France
Cooperates with
European Space Agency: Scientific Competition Platform – Case Study-img
22 member states
belong to ESA
€6.49 billion
budget for 2021

Project details

We worked with ESA on their Kelvins platform, which is dedicated to competitions related to space, technology, and science. Kelvins was originally created by ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team in 2015.

The Kelvins platform is used by a community of people with a keen interest in space, science, and technology. Its purpose is “to be a place for space enthusiasts from all over the world to set their creativity free and participate actively in the advancement of space and science.”

European Space Agency: Scientific Competition Platform – Case Study
STX Next Delivered
End-to-End Solution
End-to-End Solution
Backend Development
Backend Development
Frontend Development
Frontend Development
DevOps
DevOps
Manual Testing
Manual Testing

Challenge

The main goal of this project was to improve the quality and performance of the codebase and fix all known issues from the old version of the platform. This was done in close collaboration with developers on ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team.

ESA provided a detailed list of desired improvements and a scoping session took place to see how to best tackle these requests.

Some primary objectives that were identified included redesigning the social element of the platform and improving data extraction and competition result analysis.

Solution

We updated all frontend and backend third-party technologies to their latest versions. This made the codebase more secure and easier to maintain.

Furthermore, we added a dataset element to the web pages. Datasets can now be discussed, posted, and associated with a competition. A redesign of the user system gives users the option to post datasets and organize competitions.

We also redesigned the social element of the platform including discussions around competitions. New features included OpenID and GitHub authentication for users and a management panel for users with the ability to delete accounts.

We dockerized the application to make deployment and development setup easier. A CI/CD pipeline was created for easy and secure deployment of the platform to the server. Data extraction and competition result analysis were improved.

Django
Django
Python
Python
Docker
Docker
JavaScript
JavaScript
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PyTest
PyTest

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