Awards & Nominations
Star Dust has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
3D ISS Tracker
High-Level Project Summary
An open source, interactive, 3D web application to track the past, current and future positions of the International Space Station.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The web application renders Earth, the ISS, and the ISS' past and future orbits. It allows to predict where the ISS is going to be in the incoming hours, as well as where it has recently being. Light is also applied to Earth's model to represent the Sun, allowing you to know whether it is day or night on the different parts of the ISS's orbit – thus allowing you to know if you might be able to spot it when it passes over you!
I hoped to achieve a little more, but time flies! In particular, I would really have liked to predict the next ISS pass over a given location, as well as provide better UI controls for the existing features.
As for the technologies used, three.js was used as an abstraction layer over WebGL, while tle.js was used for predicting the ISS' orbit from a given TLE.
For development, mainly TypeScript and webpack have been used.
Space Agency Data
I used some of NASA's 3D models (Earth, ISS), as well as NASA's TLE API.
During some internal experiments, I used also NASA's Sun 3D model, and ESO's Milky Way panorama.
Hackathon Journey
It was lots of fun! I could learn a lot about 3D rendering –a big goal of mine for this challenge– in only a couple of days. I was inspired by the enthusiasm of a former teammate of mine in tracking the ISS and trying and spotting it at night. I hope they like the application once they see it!
I tried developing an intuitive and visually-appealing render of the whole scene. I could have definitely used a little bit of extra time to polish things, but I hope to have achieved something half decent at least ^^.
It's worth noting, even if most descriptions are in the first person, a friend of mine chipped in a little and helped me get started with the project, as can be seen in Git's history. They would have hoped to help a little more, but could not in the end.
References
JavaScript libraries
- three.js by Ricardo Cabello et al., used as an abstraction layer over WebGL
- tle.js by David Calhoun, used for predicting the ISS' orbit
HTTP APIs
- TLE API by NASA, used to obtain up-to-date two-line element sets of the ISS
Assets
- ISS 3D model by NASA
- Earth 3D model by NASA
- Sun 3D model by NASA
- Milky Way panorama by European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Tags
#iss #tracker #3d #web