Orbyte

Inspiration

Calvin University has a new upcoming cube sat program that is being built from the ground up! This program will give students invaluable learning experiences for many students around Calvin to learn more about space, and techniques relating to spacecraft. This project needs a good way to visualize satellite passes so as a team we can understand once our satellite is in orbit, where it is located.

What it does

This application runs in the browser, and provides accurate satellite tracking for visual observation, or amateur radio use. Users can select satellites that they would like to track, and they will appear on the map with their future orbital path, and observation "footprint" to show where they are visible. Users also can enter their location to have accurate pass prediction of when a satellite may next pass overhead.

How we built it

We built this using a library for python, Sky Field which is built on top of the SGP4 algorithms for reversing satellite telemetry back into orbital paths. Then for visuals we used nice GUI for the display of the satellite passes and other information about the satellites.

Also used are the AMSAT Two Line Elements (TLES) which give orbital information for every satellite in orbit carrying amateur radio.

Challenges we ran into

We had many issues implementing the SkyField library for proper values, as it was originally intended for astronomy, we had to adapt some of its output to properly fit the orbital parameters of the satelite. We also

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that this is accurate to the minute, performs well, and is very usable. This could be a serious website that could allow others to have easy satelite pass prediction throughout the world, for the many educational oppertunities that may require it.

What we learned

We learned about satelite telemetry and pass information that was not originally known to us, and we had the oppertunity to explore a new GUI library that provided a great user experience. We also learned a lot about time format and position formats for different coordinate systems.

What's next for Orbyte

Adding more features that make it more suited to a "Command" station for the use in our CubeSat project at Calvin. We also would like to add rig control so that it could automatically correct for the doppler shift of the satelite as the pass continues.

Built With

• python