Mission Control: The Space Dashboard

Mission Control is a live space dashboard I built to track launches, solar storms, ISS location, and moon phases—powered by real APIs and built to show what I can do as a beginner coder.

Comment

🌌 Inspiration

I’ve always been into space, and I wanted to build something that shows real space events happening live — like rocket launches, ISS passes, and moon phases. I also wanted to challenge myself by using real APIs and building something more advanced than a basic webpage.

🚀 What it does

Mission Control is a real-time space dashboard. It tracks:

  • Upcoming rocket launches
  • ISS live location on a map
  • Current moon phase
  • NASA's image of the day It pulls data from real APIs and updates dynamically, so the dashboard is always showing what’s happening in space right now.

🛠️ How we built it

I built it using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I used:

  • Launch Library 2 API for space launches
  • Open Notify API for ISS tracking
  • NASA APOD API for image of the day
  • A moon phase formula based on current date I also used Leaflet.js to show the ISS on a world map and Chart.js for data visualization. It’s hosted on [Replit/Netlify].

🧩 Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was getting multiple APIs to work together. Some didn’t return the data I expected, and others had CORS issues that took time to figure out. Displaying everything cleanly on the dashboard was also tricky, especially making it responsive for different screen sizes.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is the most complex thing I’ve built so far. I’m proud that it all works, that it looks clean, and that it uses real-time space data. Getting the map and API calls to work together was a huge win for me.

📚 What we learned

  • How to use multiple APIs in one project
  • How to work with async JavaScript and .fetch()
  • How to use mapping and charting libraries
  • How to structure and clean up code for a bigger project

🚀 What's next for Mission Control: The Space Dashboard

I’d like to add more features like:

  • Live solar flare alerts or space weather warnings
  • An interactive timeline of upcoming launches
  • A star map or telescope mode for amateur astronomers I also want to keep improving the UI and maybe add user logins to save favorite space events.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates