Client
NASA – Goddard Space Flight Center
Spritacular Crowdsourced Sprite & TLE Platform
Inexture partnered with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to build a scalable global crowdsourcing platform that allows citizen scientists across the world to submit sprite and transient luminous event (TLE) imagery, enabling large-scale atmospheric research and analysis.
Project Snapshot
Industry
Space Science · Citizen Research Platform
Solution Type
Crowdsourced Science Web Platform
Service Categories
Technologies
Python (Flask), React, PostgreSQL, AWS, CKEditor, Firebase
Duration
4 Months
Status
Live & Global
About the Spritacular Platform
Sprites and TLEs are rare atmospheric optical events that occur above thunderstorms. Capturing them requires precise timing and advanced equipment, so NASA launched Spritacular to mobilize global contributors to submit verified photos and metadata.
Inexture engineered the platform end-to-end upload systems, contributor accounts, image processing, verification workflows, global CDN distribution, and a structured research-ready database.
Client Requirements
- Global support for high-resolution image uploads
- Fast thumbnail generation and optimized preview rendering
- Real-time contributor notifications for submission status
- CMS for tutorials, blogs, and community updates
- Scalable cloud deployment with zero downtime across AWS accounts
- Admin dashboards for moderation, tagging, and dataset publishing
- High-performance viewer for scientific-quality imagery
Challenges Faced
- Serving high-resolution scientific imagery with low latency
- Balancing performance and fidelity for research-grade images
- Coordinating a zero-downtime migration across AWS accounts
- Designing a unified interface for contributors and researchers
- Maintaining strict image metadata integrity and audit logs
- Ensuring global accessibility with efficient caching and CDN routing
Our Solution & Architecture
Inexture developed a modular, cloud-native platform supporting global uploads, scientific workflows, and rich community interaction.
- CKEditor integration enabling tutorials, educational posts, and news
- AWS S3 + CloudFront for global image distribution with <1s latency
- CMS for tutorials, blogs, and community updates
- Scalable cloud deployment with zero downtime across AWS accounts
- Audit logs & version control for research validation
- Cross-account AWS migration ensuring uninterrupted operations
NASA Spritacular – Functional Platform Architecture
A functional view of platform modules, user journeys, content components, and engagement flows designed to deliver a smooth and interactive digital experience.
Technology Stack
A robust and scalable technology foundation powering seamless performance and future-ready growth
- React.js
- Python
- CKEditor
- REST APIs
- Kibana
- AWS S3
- IAM
- AWS EC2
- PostgreSQL
- CI/CD deployment pipelines
- Grafana
NASA Spritacular – System & Infrastructure Architecture
A scalable system architecture showing application layers, content delivery, integrations, and infrastructure components built for stability and performance.
Impact & Outcomes
- 50,000+ images submitted by contributors in first 3 months
- Global load time under 1 second via CDN
- 60% higher user engagement with real-time alerts
- Zero downtime during AWS account migration
- 200+ educational posts published using the content module
- High-fidelity scientific dataset strengthened by global participants
Industries We Serve
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Inexture builds secure, scalable, cloud-native systems that power scientific research, global user participation, and mission-critical data workflows.
