Azimuthal

Changes

1. Fixed orbital calculations not auto updating
2. Added interpolation
3. Add location and position details in right sidebar
4. Cleanup changes and minor refactor with the webworker.

Fixes

1. Cleaned up dead/burnt up satellites from db
2. Minor fix in behavior of select all buttons
3. Documented code, ts was seriously getting too complicated

Major update - WebWorkers

Managed to kinda deal with the lag by using WebWorkers. This means panning around the globe will be smoother, but in exchange, the satellite motions look framier as they are throttled.

Changes

1. Added satellite images for groups of satellites!
2. There are now options to select and deselect all in the countries and sites menu.
3. Searching by name now works. (literally forgot to implement this while working on filters)

Images

It’s impossible to individually get images for all 18,000 satellites, especially since most of them don’t have images or are classified. So here, I just used generic images for as many classes of satellites as possible. For example, all Starlink satellites have the same image, and all Russian COSMOS (military) satellites have a general depiction of the cosmos satellites. I tried to get the most accurate images for each group, but many are still artistic representations.
All satellites not in any group fall back to a generic image

Next step

GET RID OF THE LAG!
This has been pending for a long time, finally will work on it now.

Changes

1. Changed map to MapTiler from Open Map
2. Added tracking when you select a satellite. Camera automatically follows the satellite
3. Tracking also shows the orbital trajectory in red
4. Fixed a stupid bug where I added throttling to improve the performance, but that only reduce fps :/

Next Steps

1. Add satellite images (idk how to do that for 18,000 satellites)
2. Classify satellites and filter by category
3. Color according to category

Created the right sidebar for details!

Made the list of satellites!

Updates

1. Major CSS & color overhaul!
2. Added the preview of the list of satellites returned by search, now need to make it dynamically added by js

CSS and color designing is difficult, this update took quite a while…

Next

1. Make the list functional and clickable
2. Show satellite details on click
3. Trajectory tracking

Try out the preview at nadir-space.vercel.app!

Finished the code to retrieve search results from the backend! Also filled in more sections of the sidebar.

Next - show the search results in the scroll region, and handle search page flips.

Added filters for launch site. Launch sites are populated automatically based on whichever countries are selected.
Suggestions and improvements on GUI design are welcome!
Next steps - Get the filtered satellites from the backend, and display them below the search filter on the sidebar as item boxes.
Will also need to add trajectory tracking later.

Working on some backend code for filtering satellite entries…
This feature may take some time

Started work on the filter sidebar (suggestions on design improvements pls!!)
Working with CSS is horrible, it takes me way too long to make a simple element fit properly..

Added the layouts for the search and info sidebar
Next - populate the sidebars, first with the search function

Successfully rendered the satellites as moving dots!
Now working on the GUI, including trajectory tracking, filtering, and loading screens.

Managed to write an API endpoint to retrieve satellite ID’s based on filters, will be used later in the frontend
Next step - render the satellites as dots.

Completed code to retrieve catalog of satellites, and store it in NeonDB!
I might get banned from spacetrack bcz of the unholy number of API requests I fired for debugging…

It took me embarrassingly long to implement such a simple helper function!
Finally though, I managed to be able to sign in to spacetrack, and store the session cookie provided in vercel blob storage. Most of my time went in debugging errors with blob storage, but now that I’ve learnt that, progress should be faster!

Deployed the app on vercel, with a cesium js renderer!