Space Explorer

Inspiration

I wanted to create a web application where space enthusiasts can gather current information that is regularly updated. Rather than having to Google around for this data, the user can instantly retrieve this information in just a few clicks.

What it does

It's a website where users can explore and gain insight to information about asteroids, mars, and more.

The navbar consists of 4 pages the user can visit:

1. "Home": the main page of the website. The Astronomy Picture of the Day from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will be displayed along with the title of the image and a brief description of the image.
2. "Asteroids": lists information regarding the number of asteroids currently near earth based on the current date of the website visit as well as each asteroid's name, estimated diameter (kilometers), relative velocity (m/s), and whether or not the asteroid is considered a threat to Earth.
3. "Space Weather": Provides defintions for Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Flares within the past 30 days of the current UTC date.
   • Coronal Mass Ejections: Speed data (km/s) from NASA is displayed and each date contains a link to the Space Weather Database Of Notifications, Knowledge, Information (DONKI) for the corresponding coronal mass ejection.
   • Solar Flares: Class information from NASA is displayed and each date contains a link to the Space Weather Database Of Notifications, Knowledge, Information (DONKI) for the corresponding solar flare. The query is for high-speed solar flares (above 500 km/s).
4. "Mars": Contains NASA data regarding the weather in mars and the latest photos taken by mars rover.
   • Weather: includes NASA data for the last datum of the Sol for when the weather data was obtained, the atmospheric temperature (Fahrenheit), average wind speed (m/s), average atmospheric pressure (Pa), and the season.
   • Rover images: when the webpage loads, 3 randomly selected rover images are displayed along with the sol, earth date, and the name of the rover that took the image.

How I built it

The website is hosted on Heroku and developed with the Python Flask web framework.

Challenges I ran into

It turns out that styling columns in a table was not as convenient as I anticipated it to be. I wanted to minimize the amount of for loops in my Jinja template, but that also made styling more challenging. I also had some difficulty with centering the links in the navbar.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud that I was able to successfully build my project by the end of the hackathon.

What I learned

While searching through the API documentation from NASA, I encountered a wealth of information about space. The more I used the API, the more I learned! This project also made me exercise my web development skills, which I was looking forward to.

What's next for Space Explorer

More data! I made specific pages dedicated asteroids and mars, but there is so much more to space than that! I would also like to look into more APIs.

Built With

• flask
• heroku
• nasa-api
• python