India High School Exoplanet Data Challenge

🌌 India High School Exoplanet Data Challenge — Uncover New Worlds with AIHow do astronomers find planets light-years away?They don't see them directly. They watch starlight — and look for the faint, telltale dips that betray a planet passing in front of its star.Now, it's your turn.We invite high school students across India to step into the role of an astrophysicist and data scientist. Using a curated dataset sourced directly from the NASA Exoplanet Archive, your mission is to build a machine learning classification model that separates real exoplanet candidates from noise and false signals — the exact kind of problem professionals at NASA and research institutions tackle every day.🚀 The MissionYou'll receive a starter CSV file with real observational data. From there, it's on you:🔍Explore— understand distributions, correlations, and anomalies🧹Clean— handle missing values and class imbalance thoughtfully🤖Model— apply classification algorithms of your choice (Random Forest, XGBoost, Neural Networks — your call)📊Interpret— explain what your model learned and why it mattersNo astrophysics background required. Just curiosity, code, and commitment :)🎯 Why This Challenge ExistsMost student competitions give you toy datasets and synthetic problems. This one gives you real data from a real space telescope.We designed this challenge to bridge the gap between classroom learning and genuine scientific work — and to give students a project that belongs on a college application, a research portfolio, or a GitHub that actually stands out.This is applied AI for space science, and you don't have to wait until university to do it.⏱️ Duration: 1.5 months of self-paced, hands-on work.🏆 Prizes & Recognition🤖 Sponsor Prize — 1st Place:$300in Featherless.ai credits Sponsored by Featherless.ai — serverless AI inference platform🥇 Top Solutions Published— Winning models and write-ups featured on our platform's newsletter and shared with the STEM community📜 Certificates of Excellence— Awarded to all top-scoring participants🎓 Academic Credibility— A real, portfolio-ready project backed by NASA data — the kind that stands out to colleges and research programs👥 Eligibility📍 Open to high school students (Grades 9–12) across India👤 Solo participation or teams of up to 3 members🆓 Free to enter