Every year, NASA sponsors an intensive competition that brings together young people in cities around the world willing to use their ingenuity in the face of a global challenge launched by the agency.

From space exploration and technology or aeronautics to robotics, open source programming, environmental sustainability, earth sciences or climate change: every year, thousands of young people gather at hundreds of local events and during the limited window of a weekend to try to respond to the multiple challenges posed by the US space agency and 13 other collaborating agencies around the world (including ESA).

NASA Space Apps promotes interest in science, technology, and exploration of Earth and space, as well as fostering the growth and diversity of the next generation of problem solvers, innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs.

If in the first edition, held in 2012, there were barely 2,000 people who, spread across 25 events held in 17 countries, addressed 67 different challenges, the 2023 edition attracted 58,000 participants who, in 402 events held in 152 countries, tried to give response to thirty real-life challenges.

This Hackathon is a useful innovation instrument, it is a way to bring together ideas. It is an innovation tool with different profiles. The objective is to find talent capable of offering different angles around a challenge. It is a tool widely used by corporations to attract high-quality talent.

From the beginning, NASA intended it to be a global collaborative innovation initiative through challenges that, in the first years, were very aerospace, but that little by little opened up to other challenges typical of today's society, such as food or recycling. 

There NASA and its entire management team take the lead, and the 10 best projects are invited to Cape Canaveral, where they present their idea to the NASA team, and have even occasionally been able to attend a launch.

More than 50% of the participants are between 18 and 25 years old, and if we extend it to 34 years old, it includes 85% of the participants. Furthermore, 40% of participants are women, unlike what happens with European entrepreneurs, where the female rate is around 8%.

70% of those who attend these hackathons have technological profiles: data engineers, programmers, mathematicians, physicists and graphic designers, for example. But they increasingly attract other types of profiles: people from business schools, lawyers, psychologists...

Space has become a testing ground. There are a type of challenges more oriented to sustainability, to promoting the recycling of materials, to food or to the protection of marine flora. In the face of the next challenges, health will have a leading role, and areas such as food or energy will be core.