Not So Little Einsteins

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YtrigR-4Z7HtpuwROQw5fJSJGBSmk_7s/view?usp=sharing

http://thegoodthebadandthedebris.earth/

The project is a web application that shows a 3-dimensional snapshot of the space debris data retrieved from Space-Track. If you take a closer look you may notice that each debris point is represented by a duck. We believed this would make the visualizer more interesting and engaging to the younger users. Any debris data updated within the last 30 days is retrieved from Space-Track every time the visualizer is loaded and the coordinates are calculated using satellite.js. The coordinates are converted into spherical coordinates (longitude, latitude and altitude) and is used by NASA's Web WorldWind JavaScript extension to spawn a duck model at the given position in the 3D viewport. 

The application is a Node JS application with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, hosted via Heroku. The Debris data was retrieved using the Space-Track Node JS module which allowed to retrieve the TLE (two-lines element) data of each debris object. This data was stored in a JSON file. The contents of this JSON file were read by a Node JS function that was called every 5 seconds via the SetInterval method from a linked JavaScript file in the HTML, this function used satellite.js to calculate real time position and velocity in the Earth Centered Coordinate System. These values were stored in a separate JSON file in real-time, which was read by a JavaScript function to convert them into longitude, latitude and altitude to spawn the ducks in the 3D viewport to represent each debris object. However, due to the sheer number of data points, the loading time of the page is slow; and because of this issue, it was not possible to animate the data points in real-time. 

The webpage is designed in HTML and CSS. It is quite minimalistic with a complementary colour pallet which gives the webpage a sleek aesthetic. This ensures that the users of the web page are given concise information regarding the visualizer and makes it less strenuous to use. 

The benefits of this project are around the awareness provided by having a website showing and explaining the problems of space debris and why it needs to be addressed. The website itself is quite shareable and is intends to be engaging in order to inspire and educate the users. We aim to raise awareness of the problems caused by space debris and ways we can combat it. It will soon become a threat to both the space and the digital infrastructures as we are heavily reliant on satellites and soon space travel.

SOURCE-CODE: https://github.com/vamsisridhar/SpaceDebrisTracker,     

BACKUP-LINK: https://damp-lowlands-43680.herokuapp.com/

Our main resource and inspiration for our project was the open-source software development kit NASA WorldWind. It gave us a starting point as we created a base for our web app. The tools imbedded in WorldWind were useful, but posed some challenges when implementing them into our web app with different codes clashing with each other. We used these tools to develop visual which shows space debris around the globe using real time data from space_track.org. This tool inspired us to build on the idea of creating a way to visualise space debris while keeping track of each element’s position by using the coordinate display layer. The space debris was visualised by using a COLLADA file from the NASA WorldWind repository. To improve the presentation of our web app, the atmosphere and stars layers were also used.  

Space-Track.org, from which we obtained the debris data, has as its main mission space flight safety by sharing space situational awareness services. This represented another inspiration point for our project as our web app aims to promote awareness of the dangers space debris can represent for space exploration in general, but mainly for satellites or other objects orbiting around Earth. 

Our space apps experience was phenomenal and as a group, we believe we have achieved something quite productive while also learning a lot along the way. It was a great opportunity to work as a team and learn how to handle large projects as such as a team. We chose this challenge as we are all quite fascinated about space and the project itself, seemed quite beneficial to learn about. At the start we approached this challenge with an intention to make a web application as it would be shareable and easier to manage. We tried using Django web framework initially, however it was quite complicated to get Python and JavaScript to work together so we switched to Node JS as it was more accessible for the situation. 

We did run into some hurdles along the way, such as NASA's Web WorldWind not having a good documentation which caused a great deal of trouble due as we could not figure out how to use the Path class to create an orbit for the debris. However we did find suitable solution in the end. Another issue we did not take into account was the speed of the program; having 20000 debris objects loaded into a 3D viewport slowed down the time taken to display all the debris, which meant that we could not animate the visualisation in real-time. This was quite a set-back as we had a system to generate real-time position and velocities for the debris. In the end we settled for a pseudo-real-time solution where the data is retrieved and that snapshot is visualised on page-load. Given more time we would have implemented a system whereby the size of the duck would decrease as the time from data taking of the corresponding debris increases, in order to visualize the most up to date data in the visual. 

We would like to thank SpaceApps for providing all the great resources and organising this event. Thanks to this experience we were able to learn a lot about web development and space debris.

1. WorldWind Earth [Internet]. WorldWind Earth. [cited 2021 Oct 3]. Available from: https://worldwind.earth/ 
2. spacetrack [Internet]. npm. [cited 2021 Oct 3]. Available from: https://www.npmjs.com/package/spacetrack 
3. Space-Track.Org [Internet]. [cited 2021 Oct 3]. Available from: https://www.space-track.org/documentation#/api 
4. Docs-Web WorldWind/NASA WorldWind [Internet]. [cited 2021 Oct 3]. Available from: https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/web/docs/ 
5. Programming with Mosh. JavaScript Tutorial for Beginners: Learn JavaScript in 1 Hour [Internet]. 2018 [cited 2021 Oct 3]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6NZfCO5SIk  
6. Brian Design. HTML CSS Javascript Website Tutorial - Responsive Beginner JS Project with Smooth Scroll [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2021 Oct 3]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-2Pj5hxwrw

#webapplication #web #space #debris #visualisation

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