Awards & Nominations

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

Global Nominee

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.

Gotta Scan Them All

Summary

We created a web app that visualizes satellite orbits, and motivates users to notice the night sky by gamifying observation.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We tried to bring the user closer to artificial satellites and encourage them to learn more about both celestial technology and amateur astronomy. Many people ignore the plethora of satellites passing above them at any given moment. Even more don't know that they are observable just like stars.

To address this we developed a browser app in which the user collects satellites via observing them on the sky, in order to gain access to a satellite point of view.

After getting the user's location, the app displays a planetarium view of the night sky with the satellites currently in orbit above him. Satellites observed in the past will be marked green, and clicking them will redirect the user to a view of earth and neighboring satellites, from a "satellite-view" perspective. Those not previously observed,displayed in red, will prompt the user to locate them- if they are visible-on the sky, using the device's gyroscope.

In this way, we aspire to motivate the users, to head their sights above, and come a little closer to the night sky, while also learning about our unseen heroes, the satellites.



How We Developed This Project

We aspired to make something that showcases the beauty of night sky, and that we, ourselves, would also use. There exist many satellite viewing apps, but we found none, that let us interact with the sky and motivate us to observe while also offering different viewing options.

For the planetarium view of the night sky we used Virtual Sky API, and we generated satellite data via N2YO API.

We implemented a globe viewer using the NASA WorldWind API, that is used for the satellite point of view.

All those API's are tied together in JavaScript, while the gyroscope feature is also implemented in Full-Tilt JavaScript library.

We also implemented a database in the back end, storing users and previously unlocked satellites, using MySQL and php.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We use WorldWind API to visualize the globe and the orbiting satellites from a satellite point of view.

Project Demo

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hzbrUBwSPtv8X8c49z2bFrs90Qaxu3r2wxU2xH4Y10U/edit#slide=id.p1

Data & Resources

NASA WorldWind API for visualizing the globe.

Virtual Sky API for a planetarium view.

N2YO API for satellite coordinates and visibility information.

Full-Tilt library for gyroscope function.

Tags
#space #satellites #orbit #NEO #astronomy #sky
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.