IUT - Satellite Viewer

Context

As part of a JavaScript course at IUT2 of Grenoble Alpes University, we were asked to create a JavaScript mini-project to interact with an API and save certain searches as favorites, with the project structured in an Object-Oriented Model (MVC) format.

Implementation

To propose something original, I decided to create a basic visualization of satellite coordinates orbiting around Earth available through the community API

Celestrak and TLE-API, the latter also being based on Celestrak, but with fewer usage limitations.

The tool allows viewing the evolution of satellite coordinates at accelerated speed ($\times 1000$), explorable through a simple search bar and options depending on the API used.

Technical Details

The code is written in pure vanilla JavaScript, without any libraries. The JavaScript is separated into three parts following the MVC pattern: one for the form, one for the canvas where satellites are displayed, and one for the favorites system.

Ignoring many technical details, it’s worth noting the use of a numerical equation solving system that extracts coordinates at time $t$of a satellite from its TLE, a set of physical parameters describing the satellite’s elliptical motion. The implementation is based on this paper by Mr. René Schwarz.

The source code is available on GitHub: github.com/bxbyte/satellite-viewer