Officers from the school's Aerospace Club and Environmental Monitoring Club came together to spotlight the issue of space debris and decided to create a simulation game. However, rather than ending with just the game, considering the social impact, we aimed to form a community through this simulation that could address real-world problems. We set a forward-looking goal to collaborate with space agencies like NASA and ESA to solve tangible issues and initiated the project.
## What it does
We monitor the current distribution of space debris and remnants based on real data (to be implemented later), and apply current technologies as tools in the current scenario, allowing users to explore solutions. Like other games, after forming a strategy community, we share those ideas with actual collaborating agencies.
## How we built it
We kicked off by brainstorming ideas and narrowing down the features we wanted to implement.
Once we had a clear plan, we divided tasks based on each team member’s strengths, with some focusing on the frontend, others on the backend, and a few handling data processing.
Technologies we used:
Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript (or React, if relevant)
Backend: Flask for setting up our server and API endpoints
Database: We used CSV files for now, but the setup can scale to other databases like SQLite or MongoDB.
Visualization: We integrated CesiumJS to render a 3D map for visualizing space debris.
We managed everything through GitHub for version control, making sure to stay on top of merge conflicts.
Throughout the hackathon, we iterated and tested frequently to ensure each feature worked as expected.
## Challenges we ran into
CesiumJS Integration: Working with 3D space visualization was a bit tricky at first, especially getting entities to display and interact correctly.
Dynamic Data Handling: Reading data from the CSV and updating it on the fly took some trial and error.
CORS Issues: We ran into cross-origin restrictions while trying to fetch data, so we had to tweak our backend setup.
Time Management: We underestimated the time we’d need to debug certain issues, especially with frontend alignment and JavaScript quirks.
Team Coordination: Syncing everyone’s tasks and progress was challenging, but daily stand-ups kept us on the same page.
## Accomplishments that we're proud of
Smooth Integration: We successfully brought together multiple technologies—Flask, CesiumJS, and the Fetch API—into a functional product.
Real-time Data Updates: Our app loads space debris data from a CSV and updates the 3D map without any lag.
Interactive Controls: We built a working collector tool and made the debris entities clickable, adding more interaction for users.
Polished UI: We’re happy with how the interface turned out—simple, intuitive, and responsive across devices.
Problem Solving as a Team: We faced a bunch of unexpected challenges, but we stayed focused and figured things out together, which was super rewarding.
## What we learned
## What's next for Astro Sweep
After enhancing the game's completeness and forming a community, we propose submitting a proposal to NASA to use our game and community as a platform for exploring solutions to the problem.
What we built
We built a animated orbit debris map that would allow for simulate mission to test clearing debris with specialize satellites.
How we built it
We host this map on html website with the back end script and collection data base in java with store data base in csv. We also utilize a api called cesium for our java library which help us with 3d modeling and object interaction and animation. One of the struggles we had was to implement the correct GUI and have the generation of debris. As well putting all the code together on the front end.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Personally it was being able to create a detail map that follows real orbital mechanics ( circular orbit) by having consideration for the minimum velocity need to be in that orbital state
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