Moon Kids

Universal Event | Mapping Space Trash in Real Time

Stuff in Space

High-Level Project Summary

The Moon Kids team developed a web application prototype called “Stuff in Space” that tracks all the known space objects. It solves the challenge of mapping known space debris in real time with 30 seconds interval in between each tracking period to better inform mission flight paths, mission planning to ensure both safe and successful missions. This challenge was important for us to solve, primarily for the environment concerns that puts missions in jeopardy. Every small debris can pose a potential threat to both manned and unmanned space vehicles and satellites. Creating a safe access to space makes this challenge very important for the present and future of NASA.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t53ue6om2c5i24t6xmide/Moon_Kids_Stuff_in_Space.pptx?dl=0&rlkey=edd3cq9j4dpk4iw2pa5l66r4e

Link to Final Project

https://pushkarkadam.github.io/space_stuff/

Detailed Project Description

Summary of prototype:


  • Our prototype “Stuff in Space” has a search bar to find any space object such as a satellite or a known debris by its name and all the requested items in the space hovering above the Earth will be marked on the map according to their current position (latitude and longitude). 
  • Any requested object is visible on the map with real-time data of its position which updates after every 30 seconds.
  • Please note to download the Pitch Deck slides to view demo within presentation, thanks!


How does it work/what does it do? 


  • The web app is a static website hosted on GitHub pages.  
  • When the user enters the name of the satellite or space debris, the web app makes an Application Program Interface (API) call to fetch the current position (latitudes and longitudes) of the searched object. The object is identified on the map by its position. 
  • The web app makes API calls every 30 seconds to get new position of the object and the object trail is visible on the map. 


What benefits does it have?  


  • Identifying space debris will improve future manned rocket missions for the safety of the humans. With a reduced risk and interference of space debris in space missions. 
  • Upon further development, it will be possible to detect collision of two known objects in space or detect any object that is descending towards Earth. 


What do you hope to achieve? 


Our Moon Kids vision is to create a sustainable and safe space missions with further research to reduce the impact and likelihood of space debris, sustainable waste management practices all while enhancing the safety and efficiency of missions. The use of accurate real time tracking of space debris will inform the optimal reduced debris pathway. We also open the invitation for other coders, programmers, developers and researchers to gather the world’s brightest minds to make this vision a reality. 


What tools, coding languages, hardware, software did you use to develop your project?  


Space Agency Data

The following space agency data was used in our project: 



The data gave us direction where to focus both the present and future development for Stuff in Space. 

Hackathon Journey

This year's Moon Kids hackathon journey was a rather turbulent one with unforseen events happening for some members to limit their involvement in the hackathon, natural disasters occuring, conflicting university priorities and the time zone difference between India and Australia. We learnt that managing international teams with timezones is challenging, however despite all the challenges, we were still able to deliver a high quality MVP with less resources than anticipated.


Our team was interested in creating environmentally sustainable space missions to ensure a future for Moon and space civilisation to not have the same issue of Earth’s current pollution problems and alike. Furthermore, we were interested in the significant space debris events and working to develop a solution to resolve it. To assist NASA to take a more proactive approach in locating space debris and planning missions around it to make it more safe. We also hope to embark on future space missions as a team and wanted to contribute our ideas to resolve the space debris problem.


Like last year with the Moon Kids team, we divided the project into 2 segments: technical and product management/business side. This ensured that our team speciliaties were best utilised. All decisions were made collaboratively with concensus and all ideas were encouraged. We also made use of the time zone difference to create a day and night project team to maxmise our productivity.  


What problems and achievements did your team have? 

Problems: 


  • Our original idea was to develop a dynamic website using Django web framework that we could host on our servers with an SGP-4 Python Package. However, for every request we get, we would need computation resources to serve the clients. Moreover, we would have to manually update our package version with the changes to the package and data from CelesTrak. To resolve the issue, we used a TLE API that utilises data from CelesTrak and provides updated information with minimal PC resources to execute the data updates. 
  • Dropbox issues: the folder access wasn’t working for some members which was resolved by our Trello board integration which fixed the access issues.  
  • The timezone differences was significant with 4.5 hours on day 1 and 5.5 hours on day 2, we made it work with the India based team working while the Australian team were resting and vice versa. Essentially a day and night team crossing paths when the time zones met. 
  • Natural disasters prevented one of our members participating actively, this was an unforseen circumstance. They ended up taking a more a review role on the second day of challenge.
  • Unfortunately, some team members had to be removed from the team, as some members had unforseen conflicting priorities and couldn’t contribute to the hackathon or weren’t as participative and didn’t communicate.  Future solution is make sure all signed up team members are committed before granting membership.


Achievements: 


  • Day 1: researching, creating content for the pitch deck, MVP prototype and testing the code, design discussions and set up communication/collaboration boards/technology. Main achievement was developing and testing our MVP web app, with pitch deck and video creation. 
  • Day 2: wrapped up the project with finalising pitch deck, coding testing, video editing. 
  • Collaborated effectively as team across 2 different time zones: Sydney and India. We had a team of diverse skillsets including technical, design, product management, business/marketing.  


We also would like to thank our developers Pushkar and Shwaas for taking the lead in the MVP development and the SME for providing us sound advice!

References

Moon Kids Stuff in Space pitch deck:

https://www.space.com/24915-space-junk-space-wallpaper.html

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/688xn/p07zmr1n.jpg

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2020/09/10/experts-reveal-the-50-most-dangerous-pieces-of-space-junk-orbiting-earth-right-now/?sh=16ffa20d7c21

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html

https://www.spacelegalissues.com/space-law-the-kessler-syndrome/


MVP resources and tools:

TLE API from that uses data from CelesTrak to provide TLE for every satellite and current position of every satellite and space debris https://tle.ivanstanojevic.me/. 

Data and information in NASA Orbital Debris Quarterly News for information about the satellites launched to search for debris in the February 2021 report.  https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/pdfs/odqnv25i1.pdf 

CelesTrak data from NORAD of Two-Line Element to track and identify the motion of the satellites in real time https://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/supplemental/.  



Collaboration tools


  • Discord
  • Trello
  • Dropbox
  • Google Jamboard
  • GitHub

Tags

#mappingspacedebris #github #TLE #mappingspacetrash #moonkids #stuffinspace #internationalteam #daylightsavingchampionsunited #nightowlandmorningbird #india #australia #debris #spacetrashmapper #spacedebrismapper

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.

Mapping Space Trash in Real Time

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. Your challenge is to develop an open-source geospatial application that displays and locates every known debris object orbiting Earth in real time.