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A Real-Time Map of All the Objects In Earth's Orbit

Posted by Soulskill on from the except-for-that-mickey-mantle-home-run dept.

rastos1 writes: It started as a passion project in April for 18-year-old James Yoder, an alum of FIRST Robotics, the high school robotics competition. He wanted to learn more about 3D graphics programming and WebGL, a JavaScript API. It's stuffin.space, a real-time, 3D-visualized map of all objects looping around Earth, from satellites to orbital trash. In total, stuffin.space tracks 150,000 objects. Type in a satellite name to scope out its altitude, figure out its age, group satellites by type, and so on.

12 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. stuffin.space by __aabppq7737 · · Score: 2

    is succumbing to the /. effect

    just kidding. It's a bunch of huge resources

  2. I wondered where this went! by macs4all · · Score: 2

    I remember when the G5 Tower was first introduced, to demonstrate the compute-power of the G5, they had some guy come on stage and show a real-time animated display of all the (I assume unclassified) objects in Earth orbit.

    IIRC, it was announced that the software that did this was going to be available... And then, nothing. I just assumed the MIBs put the kibosh on the release for some "National Security" type-excuse.

    Glad to see that this is becoming available.

    So nice to see that we live in a coun-- Hey! Who are you! You can't come in h

  3. Drives me nuts by WillRobinson · · Score: 2

    When I was a kid, all we had for visualizations was a milk carton and a candle. All these things you can do from your basement make me sick!

    Really nice job though, wish I could hire him lol

    1. Re:Drives me nuts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      When I was a kid, all we had for visualizations was a milk carton and a candle.

      Luxury! When I was a lad, we lived in a milk carton by the side of the road.

      With no candle, either!

      Man that sounds like a great life.

      When I was a lad my picture was on a milk carton because I was kidnapped by a human trafficking ring and forced to perform "candle shows".

  4. Misconception about space "pollution" by Eloking · · Score: 2

    While the map is quite awesome, I'm quite sure we'll see a lot of "news" bashing about how "polluted" our space is. After all, if I show this screenshot to anyone, most people will assume our space is really polluted (Wall-E style) : http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-...

    Truth is, the dot on the map are far from accurate in size (if it was the case, the "debris" would be ~100km in size). Furthermore, most of those debris will eventually deorbit and reenter the earth atmosphere in the next decade.

    --
    Elok
    1. Re:Misconception about space "pollution" by CBM · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hey dude, it's a really nice visualization website done by a high school kid. Don't kill the buzz.

      But now that you've diverted the topic, let me tell you that you're full of BS. stuffin.space doesn't show it, but space debris is a serious problem. stuffin.space shows the largest satellites, upper stages and debris chunks, but there are billions more pieces of debris that are too small to show on a website, but large enough to cause serious damage.

      It really doesn't take much to damage a spacecraft. I have some experience with this: I've worked with two different spacecraft that experienced "micrometeoroid" hits that damaged sensitive equipment. But really, in low earth orbit, micrometeoroid means human-made debris. There are plenty of flecks of paint and fragments of silicon that can slice through delicate spacecraft apertures or pop a solar panel.

      When we ran the numbers using NASA's best simulation of space debris at the time, we were horrified to find out the amount of 20-50 micron pieces of debris that had enough energy to puncture sensitive detector windows and films. And this simulation only had data from before the huge space collisions of the past decade, which have probably doubled or tripled the total debris load. In our plans for a new satellite project, a damaging hit by space debris was one of the serious factors limiting mission lifetime.

      And no, most of the debris will not de-orbit. Yes, anything within 600 km or so altitude will likely be affected by atmospheric and solar drag and re-enter within our lifetimes, but there is a huge orbital phase space where debris will essentially be stuck there forever. NASA requires its missions to have a debris mitigation plan.

      So, thanks for poo-pooing space debris. Some high school guy's website sure was a great soapbox for you to tear a straw man apart.

    2. Re:Misconception about space "pollution" by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course.

      my point is that most of the people that are going to check will do so only to see how "polluted" space is.

      Which is... very.

      Would you stake your life on being able to run a Kerbal Space Program moon-landing mission without hitting any of the DEB (debris) objects? Would you stake your life on being able to run a KSP to launch something into a stable LEO that could loop around the planet 100 times without hitting any? How about a thousand times?

      Communications and navigation satellites - to say nothing of the ISS and its resupply missions - require orbits that never intersect any of the crap up there. And while obviously there are hundreds of miles between each item you see at any given time, sit and watch the display for a while and try to predict somewhere that's "safe".

      LEO is polluted, heavily. Space programs are mandated to be safe these days, with very little tolerated risk. Every GPS satellite or comms satellite we launch makes things significantly harder, and it's not a linear progression. Worse, the delta-V required to actually DO anything about this problem is hugely problematic as well. So we're screwing up our gateway to not-here, and doing it in a manner that makes it massively difficult to fix.

      Yes, lots of this will de-orbit. In decades, or longer.

      --
      "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
  5. A .space domain! by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I rarely post to Slashdot unless I have something to contribute, but this time I just have to say:

    WOW.

    1) I didn't know there was a .space domain.
    2) Holy moly that is beautiful.

    1. Re:A .space domain! by CaptSlaq · · Score: 2

      Agreed. This kind of stuff is what attracted me to /. in 2000. More of it please.

  6. International Space Station by rastos1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Interestingly if you lookup ISS (ZARYA) you will see another dot "just next" to it - Progress-M 28M cargo spaceship with supplies for ISS.

  7. FYI: Hubble is "HST" by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you are looking, the hubble space telescope is HST or 1990-37B. If you want to find more designations, follow the external links in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Designator like the NSSDC Master Catalog.

  8. Wow! by nospam007 · · Score: 2

    Finally! News for nerds! Wow!

    I thought it would never happen again.