Awards & Nominations

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

Global Nominee

Mapping Space Trash in Real time

High-Level Project Summary

Space Lutes created a web application that maps space debris in real time. This project solves the challenge because it is able to show the user all the current debris in space and their orbital trajectories. The issue of space debris will continue to grow as we launch more rockets into space, thus it is important to inform people about the dangers it can cause.

Detailed Project Description

Our team developed a web application from scratch using JavaScript/HTML/CSS and the external libraries "satellite.js" and "NASA WorldWind". We queried the space-track website to gather data on current TLE elements. We then filtered them out to only use debris which we then mapped to our 3D globe. From there, we tried to predict the future orbit but did not have enough time so we plan on implementing that at a later time.

Space Agency Data

We used the open source geospatial library "NASA WorldWind" to map our debris. We grabbed the Keplerian orbital elements from the TLE data that "space-track" provides and used "satellite.js" to calculate the position in ECI coordinates for each object. Our other references were "StuffInSpace" and the "SimpleISSTracker" to give us some ideas along the way.

Hackathon Journey

Our team had a great experience overall but unfortunately ran out of time. We learned a lot about orbital elements and using libraries to implement our features. Specifically, we understand how to read a TLE much better. We wanted to challenge ourselves by working in a small group with no mentors because it creates an opportunity to grow. Our best approach to solving setbacks was communicating and working together to find the best solution. This project has inspired us to continue to develop and innovate on this idea of mapping space debris and would like to find a way to incorporate machine learning into it.

Tags

#space, #spacedebris, #webapp

Global Judging

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