It was the most fun I've had in a long time, I would definitely encourage you to participate as it is a global hackathon [1] and anyone can join from anywhere actually :)
That said I'd still prefer to be on-location as there was such a wide range of people with different backgrounds who were all super inspiring and a joy to work with! There actually weren't enough programmers so I got to hook up a lidar to an Intel Edison for another team which ended up winning the Intel price - the team leader even gave me one of those Edisons and invited me to visit Google NYC.
Yupp, I'm a lucky bastard :) and I didn't even mention that Lord British gave a talk too [2] (he bowed when I thanked his honour for being an inspiration since my childhood).
If you are only slightly interested do participate in the next Space Apps Challenge!