Imported from RikepilB/spaceapps-flightdeck (
plugins/spaceapps-harness/skills/award-targeting/SKILL.md). Install upstream withnpx skills add RikepilB/spaceapps-flightdeck --skill award-targeting. Copyright stays with the author.
Read shared evidence and authority contract before applying this role or workflow.
Targeting an award category
Ten awards, one project each. They are effectively ten separate competitions with different judges' questions. Declaring a target at hour 2 changes what you build.
You are never asked to nominate a category. Judges assign them. So the target is an internal design constraint, not something you write on the page.
The ten, and what each actually rewards
| Award | Official definition | What wins it |
|---|---|---|
| Best Use of Science | Best and most valid use of science and/or the scientific method | A stated hypothesis, a test, a control, an honest error bar |
| Best Use of Data | Best makes space data accessible, or leverages it for a unique application | Making a dataset usable by someone who could not use it, or fusing sources nobody fused |
| Best Use of Technology | Most innovative use of technology | The technique itself is hard and novel |
| Galactic Impact | Most potential to improve life on Earth or in the universe | Scale of consequence plus a credible deployment path |
| Best Mission Concept | Most plausible concept and design | Systems thinking. The one category where a concept can beat a running app |
| Most Inspirational | Captures our hearts | Emotional truth, usually from a team with a personal stake |
| Best Use of Storytelling | Most creatively communicates the potential of open data through storytelling | Narrative craft over real data |
| Global Connection | Best connects people around the world through technology | Multi-region data, multi-language delivery, cross-border use |
| Art & Technology | Most effectively combines technical and creative skills | Games, illustration, sonification, animation |
| Local Impact | Greatest potential for local impact | A named place, a named community, evidence of real understanding |
The allocation argument
Half the prize pool - Most Inspirational, Storytelling, Global Connection, Art & Technology, Local Impact - is not primarily an engineering competition. Strong engineering teams cluster in Best Use of Technology, Best Use of Data and Best Use of Science, where they compete against every other strong engineering team at once.
If your team has both engineering and narrative capability, aim at the category where the narrative half is the differentiator. You are not lowering the bar; you are entering the race where your rarest asset is scarcest.
Supporting evidence from 2025: HerCode Space won Storytelling with illustration and narrative over heliophysics. Zumorroda-X won Art & Technology with farming mini-games. QUEÑARIS won Local Impact with a named Peruvian reforestation problem.
Shaping the project toward a target
Once the target is chosen, it dictates where marginal hours go:
- Best Use of Data → spend hours on ingest breadth and on the interface that exposes the data. Add a second source from a partner agency.
- Best Use of Science → spend hours on the validation section: baseline, holdout, confusion matrix, stated limitations.
- Local Impact → spend hours on the specific place. Real place names, real numbers, a real user you spoke to, delivery in the local language.
- Global Connection → ship in two languages, use data from two agencies, show the same tool working in two regions.
- Storytelling / Art & Technology → the artefact is the deliverable. Budget half the weekend for it and keep the technical core small.
- Best Mission Concept → invest in the systems document and the diagrams, not in code coverage.
- Galactic Impact → invest in the deployment path: who runs this after the weekend, what it costs, what stops it.
Hedging
A project that plausibly fits three categories has three chances at the executive panel, and the panel assigns categories itself. Hedging is legitimate. What is not legitimate is spreading effort so thin the project fits three categories weakly. Pick a primary, and let the secondaries be free consequences of doing the primary well.
Evidence limits
Competitive strategy is a hypothesis, not an official rule or measured probability. Winner counts without entrant denominators cannot establish conversion rates, crowding, or easier awards. Do not infer an empty niche from incomplete research. Mark unknown inputs and rankings provisional rather than inventing scores.