[HN Gopher] Keep Track: 3D Satellite Toolkit
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Keep Track: 3D Satellite Toolkit
Author : jonbaer
Score : 133 points
Date : 2024-09-30 08:10 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (app.keeptrack.space)
(TXT) w3m dump (app.keeptrack.space)
| mihaaly wrote:
| Nice concept! I only find it unintuitive to navigate, with button
| panel of always truncated buttons looking strange, quasi-
| permanent (requires action or stays there forever) and plenty
| error messages that I am using it wrong ('select something
| first!'), overly eager tooltips everywhere, with amusement
| centric but impractical zoomed animation on click that is not
| obvious how to reverse. It must be somewhere, the whole thing
| looks rich in functions, but I lost interest in the tiring
| entertainment centric approach before finding it.
| Mochsner wrote:
| I don't know what controls are, but is it by chance similar to
| meshlab? The controls for it were quite good for a desktop 3D
| navigator
| thkru wrote:
| Keyboard controls documentation:
| https://docs.keeptrack.space/basic-tut/keyboard-shortcuts/
|
| I mirrored Kerbal Space Program's controls where it made
| sense, but for the most part they are original controls that
| grew organically over time.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Neat! It's very cool to see what appears to be the 'hoop' formed
| by all the geosync satellites. Yet then there appears to be a
| 'cylinder' that contains the hoop whose axis is slightly off the
| hoop's access. Any idea what that represents? By maintaining the
| same distance from Earth as the geosyncs, they would seem to be
| synchronous with a particular longitude, but would rise up & down
| latitude above & below the equator with every revolution (i.e.
| onr full cycle per day).
| Sanzig wrote:
| Geostationary satellites are required to maintain their
| longitude (it's a license requirement to get their assigned
| orbital slot), but not their inclination. Sometimes operators
| will let the inclination drift a bit to save fuel.
|
| Obviously it's a tradeoff, since if you let the inclination
| change to a non-zero value the satellite will move around in
| the sky. After a certain point it becomes unsustainable because
| it will start to drift outside the receiving beam of your
| customer's antennas.
| ricksunny wrote:
| All soundng very reasonabke so far, thank you - yet why is
| the overall cylinder at an incline? If as you describe, why
| wouldn't the choice of inclination be relatively random
| across the entire population of only-somewhat-geosync
| satellites? i.e. why isn't the cylinder satellate
| constellation centered (and tberefore coaxial) about the true
| geosync hoop?
| thkru wrote:
| The dead satellites sit at roughly 0 deg inclination
| initially and then the moon causes their inclination to
| shift. Depending on where the moon is in its orbit relative
| to the satellite it can pull the argument of perigee
| (lowest point) in different directions. The end result is
| that the inclinations are all roughly between 0-20 degrees
| but they all have different RAAN and argument of perigees.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Brilliant. As a result I'm reading up on graveyard orbits
| and end-of-life perturbations from various celestial
| sources. Also, this gem, whose longitude values _roughly_
| correspond to what I 'm seeing:
|
| last line of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronou
| s_orbit#Geostatio... :
|
| "Geostationary satellites will also tend to drift around
| one of two stable longitudes of 75deg and 255deg without
| station keeping.[21]"
|
| It cites SMAD, which on its face is more than good enough
| for me, but since I don't have a copy handy, it would
| still be interesting to know why those meridians would
| represent particularly attractive ones to drift into.
| razodactyl wrote:
| Reminds me of Wall-E.
| pookha wrote:
| Very cool. Appreciate the comments for the mesh functions in the
| source code...I've played around with photogrammetry but never
| took the time to appreciate how the 3D polygon logic worked at a
| low level (AliceVision).
|
| And the UI is impressive but somewhat overwhelming. Could use a
| UI tool to help better manage the pitch\yaw\roll of the globe or
| individual vehicles\sensors (unless one already exists and I just
| missed it).
| thkru wrote:
| I like the idea of a UI menu for controlling the camera - I
| will add it to the to-do list.
|
| Left click and drag to rotate pitch/yaw around the earth. Hold
| shift to make it move slower. Middle mouse click and drag to
| rotate the camera's pitch and yaw. Control + right click and
| drag to pan up/down/left/right.
|
| Common complaint is that the UI is overwhelming. I am open to
| suggestions. I am thinking about building a separate subdomain
| that disables many of the advanced features by default to make
| it feel less daunting.
|
| There are a lot of users with very different needs, so I
| haven't come up with a good way to onboard new users without
| making this look like every other globe with dots. There is
| documentation https://docs.keeptrack.space/
| bozhark wrote:
| Want to use this with more layers of data
| thkru wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you have on mind? Depending on what
| you are looking for, I can add it to the to-do list.
| theweblover007 wrote:
| This is so amazing! Just a few fixes in the UX and it would be
| even better than satvis.
| thkru wrote:
| Anything specific? Please throw your requests here or open an
| issue on github
| (https://github.com/thkruz/keeptrack.space/issues) and I will
| try to get them implemented.
| elintknower wrote:
| Would be awesome to see the source for this tool! Also, I've
| always been curious how you get applications like this to be
| performant at higher resolutions without using GPUs or other
| graphics tricks.
| thkru wrote:
| This is an open-source AGPL project:
| https://github.com/thkruz/keeptrack.space It is using your GPU.
| The performance is the combination of web workers, separating
| the position buffers from the rest of the satellite data, and
| not using any frameworks. That last one makes it run really
| smooth, but means I am constantly trying to solve problems that
| are already solved on threejs - camera controls for example.
| alwinaugustin wrote:
| I never expected there to be so many satellites orbiting Earth.
| It feels like we've cluttered space with all these objects.
| chrisdalke wrote:
| Only appears that way because of the size of the icons
| representing them (which at the base zoom level are kilometers
| wide). If it was drawn at real scale the objects would be
| insignificant.
| exitb wrote:
| At the same time, it appears that you could load all artificial
| objects in Earth's orbit onto a single small container ship.
| thkru wrote:
| That is the objects that are big enough for us to track
| somewhat reliably (10cm+). Based on models produced by ESA's
| space debris office, it is estimated that there are 1 million
| objects between 1-10cm and an 130 million objects between 1mm
| to 1cm.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| What are all those Unknown JSC Vimpel objects in that one well-
| defined orbit between LEO and geostationary?
| thkru wrote:
| Two separate breakups that have been reported by Russians.
| Given the age and lack of regular tracking I have them listed
| as a very low confidence on the accuracy of the exact current
| location.
| nikolay wrote:
| So much trash!
| h1fra wrote:
| Once you understand all the gray points are debris it makes more
| sense (header > layer icon)
| qwertox wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| I noticed that there is another much-used orbit apart from the
| round, earth-centered Geostationary Orbit, which is smaller, more
| elliptical, off-axis and tilted.
|
| It may be the Molniya Orbit [0] which is "is a type of satellite
| orbit designed to provide communications and remote sensing
| coverage over high latitudes [...] The name comes from the
| Molniya satellites, a series of Soviet/Russian civilian and
| military communications satellites which have used this type of
| orbit since the mid-1960s."
|
| Can anyone confirm this?
|
| It appears to be full of JSC Vimpel satellites, which is "a
| Russian defense industry leader" [1], but from randomly clicking
| on the objects many are just debris.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
|
| [1] https://macvympel.ru/en/about/
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| I believe what you are probably looking at (I'm having trouble
| loading it) is probably debris in the Geosynchronous Transfer
| Orbit (GTO).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit
|
| Edit: I believe that you are looking at a group of debris that
| is in an orbit close to GTO. This response [1] has a more
| detailed answer.
|
| [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/48911/what-
| events-...
| iamwil wrote:
| If you scroll down on the option, you can launch missile attacks
| and see its trajectory.
| analogwzrd wrote:
| A user interface suggestion: I tried using the 'Find Satellite'
| option and manually scrolling through all the options in the drop
| down menu was a little tedious. Maybe allow a filter by typing
| the first couple of letters?
|
| Also, what are the US GPS satellites listed under? I saw Beidou,
| GLONASS, and Galileo but I couldn't find the GPS satellites.
| analogwzrd wrote:
| Ah got it, there was a 'Constellation' option to find the GPS
| sats.
| thkruz wrote:
| The GPS satellites bus is listed under GPS, GPS II, GPS IIA,
| GPS IIF, and GPS IIR. It looks like a bug that the Payload
| isn't showing up. I see one as GPS SVN 10. I may be only
| showing payloads where there are at least 2 with the same name
| - otherwise there would be a dropdown that is 30,000 long.
|
| Love your suggestion to improve the search feature to be more
| like the main search dropdown. Adding it to the list of to-dos
| on the github issues.
| kilohotel wrote:
| There are a few iterations of this, I'm personally partial to
| https://www.satcat.com/globe bc of all the other data available
| on site
| thkruz wrote:
| Completely agree that their data graphs are second to none.
| Celestrak used to be the standard for these kind of charts but
| Kayhan is more intuitive. We have different market space. Their
| satcat tool (great name) is for viewing singular things in the
| catalog. I focus on showing relational data between sensors and
| multiple satellites which isn't offered outside of AGI's STK to
| my knowledge.
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(page generated 2024-09-30 23:00 UTC)