BUET Zenith| Orbital Sky

Awards & Nominations

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

Global Finalist

Orbital Sky

A huge number of satellites in Earth's orbit support our day-to-day life on the ground. Your challenge is to develop a method to improve public knowledge of these satellites, with an eye towards driving user engagement, enthusiasm, and exploration.

Satellight : Putting Light On Satellites

Summary

Our project "Satellight" aims at connecting people with satellites in a socially engaging way by representing satellites in a very visual, social and organic way. Our project comprises of Web and Android apps and Arduino module. Using our apps, users can observe satellites in Map View, Night Sky View, 3D Model View, VR and First Person View live in real-time or at anytime in past or future. Not only that, they can comment on their favorite satellites and see others' comments and number of views for a particular satellite too ! And, our Arduino module is a physical 3D pointing device that upon selection of a satellite, will physically point to the sky where the satellite is currently at !!!

How We Addressed This Challenge

The challenge we had to confront is that we need to connect satellites to mass people and enthusiastic knowledge seekers in a Visual , Realistic , Social , Impacting and Unique way.

To address the challenge, we have developed a Web ( https://satellight.netlify.app/ ) for the user of all platform and an Android app (download link is given below) as well as an Arduino module which is connected to the Android app. Using those apps, users can observe satellites in 4 different views and also in VR mode in present, past or future timeline.

Please visit https://satellight.netlify.app/ right now and you will see everything on your own !!!! (Desktop with a Chrome browser is recommended). This web app can also be accessed from android app as we add it in our Android by WebView.(Android app download link is given below)

Map View :

In this view, satellites and their trajectories are plotted in a 2D map, if users zoom close enough, they will even be able to see those moving.

An example of map view from both web and android app.

Web: In the web app, if a satellite is clicked, the real-time First Person View of Earth from that satellite will be rendered.

Android:

Night Sky View :

This view represents how the satellite would look like in a local night sky, in this view, satellites along with their trajectories are plotted in a google night sky map. And upon clicking on the satellite, the real-time First Person View of Earth from that satellite will be rendered.

web: (can also be seen from android by WebView)

3D Model View :

Using Map or Night sky views, users won't be able to get a visual clue about their altitude or height, but, using our 3D model view that represents realistic and real-time (present/past/future) 3D positioning of satellites, they will be able to interactively engage with those satellites in 3D space.

web: ( can also be seen from android app by WebView)

First Person View :

This view is the most amazing among other views, using first person view, users will be able to see how the earth looks from satellites in real-time (present/past/future) considering the position and altitude of the satellites and the day-night condition of earth. And somewhere it gives the user an experience of sight seeing and space travelling.

An example of watching first person view from both web and android app.

Web:

Android:VR:

In our android app, a user can interact with those satellites in a mesmerizing VR experience, that is user can find a satellite around his location with a 360 view.

Android: An example of watching Bangabandhu satellite-1 from android 360 VR view

All this views support Present, Past or Future timeline !!!!

Satellite details:

Users can explore details, country name, use cases and all other related information of satellites very conveniently.

web:

Android:

Social Feature :

In our web app ( https://satellight.netlify.app/ ) , users will be able to see the number of views and also comments for satellites, and they also can comment on their favorite satellites !!!


After we shared our web app with some people, interestingly they are finding the satellites of their own country and posted very inspiring comments about their favorite satellites , and by counting the number of views, we can also know which satellites are loved by the people !!!! This feature is inspiring inspiring knowledge seekers to explore the vastness of satellites, space and cosmos !!!

Web:

Finally all features of web app can be accessed from our android app as we connected our web app with web view.

An example of accessing web app from android

Arduino 3D Pointer :

Upon selection of a satellite from our android app, this Arduino device physically points to the sky where the satellite is currently located. It will be connected with android app by bluetooth.

What is unique/creative in our project ?

With First Person realistic live view of earth from space, engaging social features, and Arduino pointer pointing at the cosmos and 360 view from user location, our project is unique from others. 

How are we impacting ?

We are impacting the space traveling industry worth more than 20 Billion dollars so that the mass population of our planet can experience space traveling in the first-person view just like the astronauts at zero cost from their home !!!

How We Developed This Project

Web app =>

  • React JS Framework
  • Firebase database for social feature
  • tle.js for parsing TLE data
  • NASA WorldWind API for visualization
  • Google map API

Android App =>

  • Android Studio
  • Google VR SDK
  • Google Map SDK
  • NASA WorldWind API

Hardware =>

  • Arduino Uno
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Space Agency Data:

  • NASA SSC RESTful API : This API has been used in our android part to get real-time position and motion variables of some satellites.
  • NASA WorldWind API : This API has been used both in our web and android app, in both apps, it is implemented to render FPV (First Person View) of earth from satellites.
  • NASA TLE API : We didn't get motion variable of some of the satellites from the SSC RESTful API, so we used NASA TLE API that fetches Two-Line-Elements of the satellites, then we analyzed that data by feeding in the timestamp and plotted in different views both in web and android. We also made our own API (that our android app uses) that takes timestamp, observer's position etc from request body, then it analyzes that using the TLE data taken from NASA, and sends corresponding motion variables in the response body.
  • https://www.n2yo.com/ : We used data from this site to get some specific information about satellites, like their launching mass or mission duration etc.

Other Sources of Data:

  • Wikipedia : We collected organic data (such as real images of satellites, its country name, type, use cases etc) from wikipedia.
Tags
#satellite #vr #first person view #connect #orbital sky
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.