Hypercube

Iasi | Mapping Space Trash in Real Time

Awards & Nominations

Hypercube has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Space Trash Map

High-Level Project Summary

Our project is an open-source geospatial virtual globe-based application that locates and displays in real-time all debris objects orbiting Earth provided by the Space-Track website. We use WorldWind as the main engine for user interface . For mapping, conversion, and setting of the various coordinates, we use the satelliteJS library. The importance of a space trash map in real-time is entirely related to the scale of this problem in the following years, considering the increased traffic and the number of satellites assigned to be launched shortly. Furthermore, it can be the first step to monitor and predict space trash's behaviour in the future, trying to minimise the collision of debris.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/06Na2JMEyDPynbmBuY0i7BmZg#5Team_HYPERCUBE_NASA_Space_Apps_Challenge

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/BriannaStan/spacetrash

Detailed Project Description

Our project creates a virtual globe map using Web WorldWind and displays real-time all tracked space objects obtained from the space-track.org catalog. We have a cron job that updates the 3LE database file from space-track.org and saves it on our server once a day. The web application is loading on the client's browser, and using WorldWind virtual globe API is creating an interactive visualization of Earth in 3D. After the WorldWind is initialized and loaded, the application requests the space trash objects data from our server. A complete list of space objects is created based on their geodetic position at the current time. Also, we save 3LE information of each object that we will use later to compute positions at different times. Based on these positions, we create a GeographicText object for each space object and map the name for identification. All space objects are displayed at the same time.

We leverage the client browser to realize the computation reducing the requirements for expensive infrastructure.

We store the database on our server, so the application is not generating requests against space-track.org to generate heavy traffic. Also, the database is cached, so it's not using intensive CPU functions to be transferred.

We are trying to obtain an open-source virtual globe base application that displays and locates every known debris object orbiting Earth in real-time. What tools, coding languages, hardware, or software did you use to develop your project?

For developing the application, we used IntelliJ as our IDE tool. From an architecture point of view, we started from a standard Spring Boot web application written in Java. On top of that, using HTML, we created the main entry point and loaded all Javascript resources (NASA's WorldWind dependencies, satellite.js library, Javascript application code). Next, we used DigitalOcean cloud infrastructure for deployment and created a droplet to install a Tomcat 9 application server. Finally, the application is exported using WAR packaging, generated with Maven, and deployed in the application server.

https://spacetrash.hypertree.org

https://github.com/BriannaStan/spacetrash

Space Agency Data

For the data, we used the entire catalog from Space-Track: https://www.space-track.org to get the parameters we need to calculate the positions of the space trash. To determine these parameters, we used SatelliteJS: https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js , which converts the data from Space Track into the final coordinates of the objects. Finally, we used NASA WorldWind: https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov , precisely the GeographicalText object for our user interface and to display the space debris on the globe. This model also allows us to show the names for each debris.

Hackathon Journey

Nasa Space Apps Challenge was our first hackathon, and it was an amazing experience. We learned a lot about space and, more precisely, about Earth’s orbit and the huge problems space debris is causing. Working with databases and AI also taught us a lot about coding. We chose this challenge because we believe this topic is not discussed enough, and that causes dramatic consequences. Additionally, some of our members had previous experience researching space debris, and we were all interested in the technology the challenge required. We had two main activities while developing the product: research and development. The research consisted in reading mostly NASA and ESA reports regarding the current space debris situation. The development consisted of writing Javascript code to integrate our application with Space-Track database information. We mapped the over 20.000 pieces of large and dangerous debris around our planet with the information available there. We encountered some problems, among which there was too much space debris to process, and the app required a lot of resources. However, with teamwork and the help of mentors, we managed to optimize the product. We want to thank the organizers and the mentors for providing this fantastic opportunity for us, and we genuinely believe we learned a lot.