Inspiration
From a young age, my colleague and I have been interested in all things astronomy. As newbies in the web development space, we wanted to create a project that would teach us new skills we can expand on in the future.
What it does
Our project request's the user's precise location to display on a map along with the current location of the International Space Station.
How we built it
We used HTML and CSS to create our page, along with JavaScript to handle the application logic. To show a map on the page, we used Leaflet, an open source JS library for interactive maps. Displaying the current location of the ISS was accomplished with an request to Open Notify's "International Space Station Current Location" API via jQuery.
Challenges we ran into
Given our limited web development experience prior to the event, we had some brief difficulties with properly requesting information from the API.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In a short period of time, we were able to learn a handful of new web development skills and leverage them to build a website with useful and interesting functionality for an end user.
What we learned
Throughout our work on this project we learned to allocate our time more effectively and manage the scope of our ideas/development. We also came to realize that despite the wealth of information available to us, problem solving isn't typically as simple as Googling. Adaptability and improvisation are key.
What's next for ISS Tracker
In the future we aim to rebuild the project with React Native to create a more appealing UI. Additionally we would like to implement more API requests to provide more metrics on the ISS including the astronomers currently on the station.
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