High-Level Project Summary
While a range of 2D space station trackers are readily available online, including Nasa’s Live Space Station Tracking Map, there are not many trackers that provide 3D depictions of the International Space Station and its orbit around Earth. If any do exist, they mostly use closed-source software. With the ISS Tracker, our team has created an application using open-source software that provides real-time tracking of the International Space Station in three dimensions.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Using open-source software, we created an application that depicts real-time tracking of the International Space Station. Users can track the ISS through the site and view information about its orbit location. The app will showcase the ISS’s orbit and the Earth in three dimensions. This is important because it will aid in helping people better visualize the orbit path in relation to its location around Earth. The application works by calling an API to retrieve TLEs, which it then uses to pinpoint where the ISS is at a given time. Through the app, we hope to create a platform where people can easily visit and learn about the ISS, its purpose, goal and whereabouts.
To develop this application, we used:
- Three.js
- Angular
- TypeScript
- CSS
- HTML
- satellite.js
- 3d models from Nasa
- Figma
Space Agency Data
The space agency data we used for this project included:
- Earth model - https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/2393/earth-3d-model/
- ISS model - https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/iss-6628
Hackathon Journey
Our team really enjoyed partaking in Space Apps this year. All of the challenges provided were very interesting, but we ended up picking one which we felt we would be able to learn from the most. All of our team members had been interested in 3D development for a while, and so this challenge seemed to be the perfect opportunity for us to begin learning and getting started with it. This also influenced how we approached the development of this project by taking this experience as an opportunity to grow despite any setbacks or challenges. If we did experience a setback or challenge, we decided to take it one step at a time by breaking down the potential issues and going through them one by one. This approach allowed us to evaluate the cause of the issue in a more strategic and organized manner. Overall, this hackathon was an insightful experience for us as we learned about working on a time-constrained and complex challenge while working with a team and learning about 3D development. Lastly, we would just like to thank Nasa and everyone involved in this hackathon for providing a space for us to experiment and work on these meaningful challenges.
References
Tags
#isstracker, #iss, #internationalspacestation, #threedimensional