Awards & Nominations

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

Global Nominee

Debris Tracker

High-Level Project Summary

Debris Tracker is a tool that maps space debris in real time. It helps in the analysis of debris data and makes it accessible and understandable for the users. It provides detailed information about a particular selected debris and also outlines the trajectory of the particle. It allows the user to predict when a particular debris particle passes any location which can be useful for tracking the particle and taking action. The tool also provides a timeline that helps to predict the orbital environment at a different point of time. It is useful for understanding how space debris is polluting the earth orbits and how action can be taken to clean them for satellites and important missions.

Detailed Project Description

DEBRIS TRACKER


A tool to analyse space debris


Debris tracker is a web app. It maps 3 kinds of debris particles namely COSMOS 2251 DEB, IRIDIUM 33 DEB and FENGYUN 1C DEB onto a globe in real time. It tracks each debris particle and allows user to see their trajectory and predict their position at a different point in time. This feature can be used to track a particle and see it in future and take action accordingly. It also provides an option to track a specific particle and predict when in future will it pass user's or any other specified location.

How does it work?


For each debris particle, it provides a detailed information which includes:



  • NORAD ID (North American Aerospace Defense ID)
  • Element Set age (days)
  • Ecentricity (of its elliptical orbit)
  • Apogee Height (Km)
  • Perigee Height (Km)
  • Inclination (degrees)
  • Period (minutes)

All the above information are just a click away.

User can also adjust the speed of the debris particle and see how it goes.


The orbital environment can be seen at a future time using the timeline at the bottom


The radio passes of a specific debris particle for next 10 days over a specific location can be known with just a simple search

Benefits of tool:

Space Debris Is huge problem that needs to be looked at as 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. Earth orbits like LEO and Geostationary orbits are very important various satellite missions. They also allow us to set up global telecommunication networks and satellite navigation systems. Using this tool can help analyse the situation in different orbits and also understand how space debris is spread around. It can be used to predict the radio passes of a particle and further take action. It proivides the space data in a way that is easily understandable to the user.


Looking Forward:

This tool can be further scaled to include even more space debris data and also have visualisations of orbits to help understand the conditions of different earth orbits.


Tools used for development:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Cesium API
  • N2YO's API
  • Celestrak dataset

The code can be found at : https://github.com/shriyaD13/DebrisTracker

Space Agency Data

I analysed the need for the project by reading about the space debris data from ARES and understood how space debris is formed .

Also reading articles from NASA's Open Data portal made me realize how space debris is increasing day by day and what all information would needed in the application for a better understanding of debris. Also pictures from NEOSSAT Astronomy Data made me visualise the environment around earth near different orbits and how space debris is increasing at a high rate and making it difficult to launch satellites. I also went through youtube videos on space debris from ESA to understand the problem even better.

For development of the project I used the TLE data set from Celestrak and N2YO an open source service for tracking and information of material in space. For geospatial features I used Cesium.

Hackathon Journey

This was my first hackathon and it was the best one. I learned a lot about space and how solutions are made and developed for a particular problem

Tags

#develoment#javascript#space

Global Judging

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