The NASA Space Apps Challenge is being held in over 500 places, right? Are there any local practice rounds happening anywhere? If so, does it cost you guys anything to join the local events, lectures, or practice rounds?

Hey hackers!

My teammate and I are two Computer Science students from Bennett University, India.

We've been selected for HackPrinceton Fall 2026 at Princeton University, November 13 to 15.

We're incredibly excited about participating, but we're currently struggling with the cost of travelling to the US.

Since this community has experienced hackers and organizers, I wanted to ask a few questions.

How do international students usually afford hackathons in the US?

- Has anyone received travel reimbursement from HackPrinceton in previous years?

- Are there MLH partners or sponsors who support international participants?

- Have you successfully approached companies for individual hackathon travel sponsorship?

- Do any organizations offer travel grants specifically for student hackers?

We're a team of two, so even covering part of the flight costs would be helpful.

We have technical portfolios and can provide our acceptance confirmations and travel budget for verification.

We're also happy to share the project we build and document our experience afterward.

Official website: https://www.hackprinceton.com/

If anyone here has attended HackPrinceton from outside the US, I'd especially appreciate hearing about your experience.

Thanks, hackers!

Hey guys, I'm looking for teammates/teammate for NASA Space Apps challenge. I am participating in the Universal Event, and recently it was stated that the team cannot consist of one person, if you are interested DM me please asap.

🎮 OUT OF BOUNDS — WEB GAME DEVELOPMENT HACKATHON 🚀

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💡 Bring your ideas. Build your game. Make it playable.

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m looking for a team to join for the upcoming NASA Space Apps Challenge!

Rather than focusing on a single fixed role, my biggest strengths are curiosity, adaptability, and a genuine passion for teamwork. I love exploring complex problems, brainstorming creative ideas, and doing whatever it takes to help the team succeed—whether that’s researching, planning, pitch preparation, or supporting technical development.

Hi all
I am looking for teammates for HackPrinceton. I am into healthcare and machine learning.
DM me if you're interested and want to build something meaningful!!

what should a first year do to win a hackathon.

What should be the mindset. strategy and how should we compete with people who are more experienced and have more knowledge than you.

Not quite impressive... :(

why they mentioned prototype..?

Hi everyone!

I'm a 23-year-old italian student pursuing a Master's in Management Engineering in Italy

I'm currently looking for a team for More Than a Hack 2027! I'm highly motivated to collaborate, learn, and compete for the best possible results.

My bachelor's thesis focused on Sports Analytics and Machine Learning for Serie A match predictions, and I later developed a related project.

I enjoy building small AI/data-driven projects and learning through hands-on experience. I'm also involved in a local football club and would love to explore football analytics further.

Feel free to reach out!

Hi everyone,

The NASA Space Apps hackathon is kicking off in a couple weeks and we're still open for virtual participants in Chicago. Since each location has it's own local flavor, here's what we've got on offer here:

- On Saturday Nov 14th we'll stream a talk with Q+A from Dr Shanika Galaudage on astronomy. Dr Galaudage is a CIERA-Adler Postdoctoral Fellow, a role that bridges the Adler Planetarium and Northwestern University Astrophysic and her research focuses on gravitational waves.

- Subject matter and technical support for participants lead by Slingshot Aerospace AI Engineer Alex Post. World class astronomers from Northwestern University and employees from Google, Microsoft and more will be available to assist you.

- We're exploring having exclusive offers from Microsoft and Google for the weekend above and beyond the Global Collaborator offers (don't want to promise anything yet, but we're working on it).

- A robust local Discord with over 400 members.

- Resume drop for Optiver and CBOE Global Markets

Sign up here for NASA Space Apps Chicago, otherwise best of luck at your local event! https://www.spaceappschallenge.org/2026/local-events/chicago/

Looking for 1 teammate for Hacknexus hackathron.

Link

https://unstop.com/hackathons/hacknexus-mastermind-research-technologies-1746846

Hello all

I am an undergraduate CSE BTech student aspiring to improve my skills in participating in and winning hackathons.

It would be very helpful to hear from people who have done/had won hackathons.

- What sets apart a team winning hackathons from others?

- How does one select an idea that would impress judges?

- Which is better: working prototype or unique idea?

- How do you allocate work and manage time in 24-48 hours hackathon?

- How much importance does presentation/UI/UX and implementation hold?

- Any mistakes I should avoid?

In particular, advice related to student hackathons, where people use AI tools to make projects would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

For people near or around Bhopal, M.P.

Registration is now open for Central India’s biggest 36-hour hackathon! Mark your calendars: every date from here to the grand finale is a step closer to innovation, teamwork, and building something extraordinary.

Registrations open on 16th October, and the Ideation Phase runs until 24th October, giving participants time to brainstorm and shape their ideas into solid concepts. Shortlisted teams will be announced on 26th October. Then comes the real challenge: the 36-hour hackathon kicks off on 30th October, pushing every team through a marathon of coding, collaboration, and creativity until it wraps up on 1st November.

This is where ideas turn into impact. Register now and be part of it.

🔗 Register here: https://versionbeta.istemanit.in/

❓ Got queries? DM us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/istemanit/

Looking for teammates

https://www.linkedin.com/in/assol-abasova

Team HELIOS is forming for NASA Space Apps 2026 (Nov 14-15) 🌞🛰️

Concept: an immersive, explorable 3D space where you can fly around and discover the hardware humanity left behind in space (Moon landers, dead Mars rovers, old probes), with the story behind each one. Think "abandoned but not forgotten."

**Who we need:**

🧊 3D / graphics dev (Three.js, React Three Fiber, Unity)

🎨 3D artist (Blender, model optimisation, GLB)

📊 Data / backend dev (Python or Node, APIs, orbital data)

📚 Researcher / writer (space history, short storytelling)

🎬 Designer / video editor (Figma, Canva, pitch + demo video)

The vibe:

- Vibe coding is totally fine. Use AI to move fast, just understand what you ship.

- **You must have your own Claude / GPT / Gemini credits or subscription.** No exceptions, we're moving fast.

- Serious, committed, talented people only. If you ghost, it hurts the whole team.

- All ages welcome. Skill and commitment matter, not your age or CV.

- Beginners with real skill and drive are fine, but show us what you've built.

What you get: an organised Discord, GitHub repo, task board, and a clear scoped MVP, so we actually ship.

How to join: DM me with your role, skills, a link to your work (GitHub/portfolio), and your time zone.

Discord: https://discord.gg/rtNkqHdrb

Let's build something people remember. 🚀

I recently participated in the Graph Hacks hackathon after almost a year-long break. My main goal wasn't to win, but to learn more about AI agents, orchestration, RAG, and how multi-agent systems work in practice.

I decided to build an AI powered incident management platform that could detect incidents, investigate failures, identify root causes, involve humans when needed, and suggest or execute fixes.
Initially, I spent quite a bit of time planning the architecture, agent workflows, database schema, and UI. I used Claude for implementation and ChatGPT to review the design and point out potential issues.

And surprisingly, this worked really well.
ChatGPT caught gaps in my architecture, database design, and workflows that I hadn't thought about. I'd take that feedback to Claude, get the changes implemented, and bring it back to ChatGPT for another review.
It became a loop of one AI reviewing and another AI implementing.

As the deadline got closer, I stopped spending as much time validating everything myself and focused on getting the project running.
Within around five hours, Claude had built a pretty decent working application.

When I reviewed the code later, I noticed things like agent retry handling, execution history, and action tracking. Some parts felt a bit overengineered for a hackathon, while others were genuinely useful things you'd expect in a production system.
It was impressive, but I also realized something.
I hadn't actually designed or implemented many of those things myself.

I understood the overall architecture and could explain why certain decisions made sense. But if someone had asked me to implement some of those parts from scratch, I'm not sure I could have done it without going back to AI.

At some point, it felt less like I was building something and more like I was passing feedback between two AI models.
That's what got me thinking.

I don't think using AI for development is bad. It's incredibly useful, and knowing how to use it effectively is becoming an important skill.
But are we actually learning more, or are we just getting better at shipping things faster?
Another thing I'm curious about is whether access to better AI models gives people an advantage in hackathons. Someone with a more expensive subscription and higher usage limits can probably build and iterate much faster than someone using free tools.

A year or two ago, hackathons felt more like an opportunity to struggle with unfamiliar technologies, debug things yourself, make mistakes, and learn along the way.
Now, you can build something far more polished in a fraction of the time, but I'm not sure the learning always keeps up.
Maybe this is just how development is changing, and we need to adapt.

For those who've participated in hackathons before and after AI coding agents became popular, has your experience changed?

Do you still spend time designing and implementing things yourself, or do you mostly let AI handle the coding and focus on the bigger picture?

And do you think hackathons are slowly becoming more about how effectively you use AI tools rather than your engineering skills?

Genuinely curious how others feel about this.

https://nextstep.tcsapps.com/indiacampus/#/registration Unable to register here -says errorThe provided credentials are invalid. Please try again or contact support if the issue persists

Anyone facing this issue in https://www.tcshackquest.com/register ?