High-Level Project Summary
The increasing amount of debris orbiting Earth could potentially limit our access to space, impacting not only exploration efforts but routine aspects of our life on Earth. We developed an open-source application that displays and locates non-working satellites and working satellites and debris orbiting Earth in real-time.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our application tracks satellites and other objects orbiting Earth in real-time on the interactive web application.
We used celestrak.com for datasets of satellites in TLE format, SatelliteJS JavaScript Library for converting TLE datasets to Longitude, Latitude, and Altitude, and CesiumJS JavaScript library for developing a 3D interactive Earth model and animating satellites paths. We are also using Asynchronous JavaScript to animate all satellites at the same time. So we get tracking of satellites in real-time
First of all, our project is interactive and available for any user. Second, incorporate a user interface (UI) timeline feature to allow the user to see the orbital environment at a different point in time.
Our benefits are that tracking objects in orbit is very important and we responded to this challenge in a simple and interactive way (3d model web - application)
Space Agency Data
httsps://www.space-track.org - the link from the Space agency, provided by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). The main thing we used from here is the SGP4 algorithm, which is needed for the conversion of the TLE format to geological data ( latitude, longitude, and altitude). This information is needed for placing each satellite in its place.
https://celestrak.com/- used to provide initial datasets of satellites in TLE Format
Hackathon Journey
I am writing this from the name of all participants of the Litt team: Sharaf, Robiya, and me (Nozira). The participation in the project was most unexpected to me because I was not really good at programming and all other stuff like that. I can say that I learned a lot from the project and with the help of my team members, understood myriad things about programming. Enough about me let's. Let’s talk about Robiya.
Robiya- one of the best programmers I know-and whom I met previously in the courses, and who wasn’t a part of our team at the beginning (lost her previous team ) but we excepted her with a wide hand (actually we are very lucky to have her). She possesses many talents in programming which were handy for our project. We shared part of a project on the first day: making an Earth sphere, finding out how to put a place marker on it and how to make satellites fly above the Earth's surface. That was a fascinating day and the best part of it was getting our 3D Earth sphere ready and a duck flying above it (changed into satellite shape). The first day of the hackathon was in an online format but now we are sitting together, working on our project, and eating bananas to spur our brains to action. Robiya is working on a detailed description of the project, which must be done accurately and without any mistakes; she is doing that perfectly.
Sharaf- the captain of our space ship, who is finding out satellites and debris, and calculating their location. He is the main brain of our project. On the first day of the hackathon, he was looking for the locations of the satellites and now he is placing them on their locations. To make the whole bunch of 22.281 satellites fly on their location is the headache of Sharaf and his laptop. He is facing some problems with that but I am sure he will make the program work the way he wants.
In conclusion, we are all having fun, running along the way of the programming world, and in hope that our project will help people to understand the hazards, we are going to face if debris concentrates on the space.
References
httsps://www.space-track.org - the link from the Space agency, provided by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). The main thing we used from here is the SGP4 algorithm, which is needed for the conversion of the TLE format to geological data ( latitude, longitude, and altitude). This information is needed for placing each satellite in its place.
https://celestrak.com/- used to provide initial datasets of satellites in TLE Format
https://cesium.com/platform/cesiumjs/ - Cesium is the open platform for software applications designed to unleash the power of 3D data. 3D geospatial visualization for the web.
https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js - A library to make satellite propagation via TLEs possible on the web. Provides the functions necessary for SGP4/SDP4 calculations, as callable javascript. Also provides functions for coordinate transforms.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLE - general information about TLE format provided by Wikipedia
Tags
#litt #satellitehacking
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.