Awards & Nominations
Standard NCTU CS Student has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Connection
The solution that best connects people around the world through technology.
3D ISS Tracker
High-Level Project Summary
Our project provides an open-source web application to track the ISS. This application makes it easy to track the ISS for any timespan by the 3D depictions of the ISS, the Earth, etc., with functionality for the users to specify which moment they would like to observe. Moreover, we demonstrate the accurate orientation of the ISS, which rotates while orbiting and always faces towards the Sun. Down to the Earth, we display all ground stations and circle an area for link-available stations; up to the space, we show all space debris, and indicate the nearest one with a vibrant sphere. With this lightweight application, one can explore the mystery of the ISS to their heart’s content.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
We developed a web application, which includes a 3D ISS model revolving around a 3D Earth surrounded by debris. Two tracks, one indicates the route on which ISS will travel, the other the route that ISS has traveled, a control panel for the users to manipulate the viewpoint, a timeline bar for the users to set time, and text information regarding the ISS, are additional features.
We host our application on GitHub Page, which is stable and publicly accessible, and hence all needed calculations and rendering are done on the browser. Although all the endeavors are done by the client, with our lightweight ISS model (less than 1 MB) and attempt to optimize this app, the client can utilize these features all the way smoothly, especially compared to existing, similar websites. The ISS model prototype comes from NASA, but we painted it more beautifully with Blender.
The main goal of our project is to provide an efficient yet the vivid depiction of the orbiting ISS. With this, anyone is able to learn and even immerse themselves in the beauty of the space!
Space Agency Data
We made extensive use of the NASA 3D resources library (https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/), which provided the ISS 3D model we used. It allows us to display the accurate orientation of the solar panels, making our project realistic.
We also made use of the ground station TLE data from the SpaceBirds application (https://github.com/WorldWindLabs/SpaceBirds) made by NASA Ames Research Center. It helps us to determine uplink/downlink connection availability by computing the line of sight to available ground stations.
ISS 3D model (https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/iss-6628).
Hackathon Journey
During the development of this space app, we learned several kinds of stuff that we used to be unfamiliar with, such as JavaScript, 3D modeling with Blender, etc. To develop the app, we first set up the basic framework with Web WorldWind. We then thought of new features and tried to implement them. Most of the setbacks we encountered were due to time limits and unfamiliarity with JS and web applications. We spent a huge amount of time familiarizing ourselves with JavaScript and optimizing our app performance.
We would like to thank NASA for WorldWind. The amazing framework had made a tremendous help.
References
Our project GitHub: https://github.com/DENGRENHAO/3D_ISS_Tracker
Software:
- Blender (https://www.blender.org/)
- Web WorldWind (https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/web/)
3D Model Files:
- ISS 3D model (https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/iss-6628)
Data:
- ISS TLE (https://live.ariss.org/tle/)
- Debris TLE (https://www.space-track.org/documentation#/api)
- SpaceBird (https://github.com/WorldWindLabs/SpaceBirds)
Code
- satellite.js (https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js)
- Spot the station (https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm)
Tags
#SpaceApps, #Website, #3D-model, #WorldWind, #Blender, #ISSTracker