Space Radar

Everything in the sky, where it really is, and it tells you when it is guessing.
A live 3D map of space in your browser. Free, open source, no account.

Open it: www.spaceradar.ai

• It is real. Satellites are worked out in your browser from public orbital data, and every picture says whether it is measured, modelled or an artist's impression, with its source.
• It is yours to take. MIT code, no account, no adverts, no tracking, no build step. One command runs your own copy, and it runs with no internet too.
• It takes you somewhere. One map from your own street to the Milky Way seen from outside, with narrated trips that fly the camera for you.

Run it in 30 seconds

Nothing to install, nothing to compile. Python's built-in server is the whole toolchain:

git clone https://github.com/Sara-Managed-Projects/space-radar.git
cd space-radar && python3 -m http.server 8177 --directory site      # then open http://localhost:8177

28 narrated trips (215 stops), 109 389 stars in 3D, 40 star systems to fly into, about 17 000 satellites at their real positions, and every picture labelled as measured, modelled or an artist's impression. Teach with it: present mode and an autopilot screen for a classroom or a museum, and a zip that runs offline.

Follow: YouTube · Instagram · LinkedIn · Discussions · Roadmap

You can help without writing code

• Report a wrong number or name, with a source: a data-accuracy report.
• Try it in a class or on a museum screen and tell us what broke or worked: a classroom report.
• Translate it: docs/TRANSLATING.md, or offer a language.
• Suggest or review a trip. Astronomers: read one trip's narration for errors.
• Edit a word on GitHub, with no tools at all: CONTRIBUTING.md shows how.
• Build a tiny space simulator in one HTML file, in ten minutes: docs/ADD_A_SIMULATOR.md, shelf at spaceradar.ai/lab.
• Want a first task? Pick one by what you like doing: the list shows only the starter issues nobody has begun. Every first comment gets an answer within 48 hours.

If Space Radar is useful to you, a star helps other people find it.

What it is

Space Radar is a living 3D map of space. It draws the Earth with today's clouds, about 17 000 satellites where they are this minute, the space stations and who is aboard, rockets about to launch, probes on their way out, every planet and 21 moons (20 of them with a real map), the stars in three dimensions, nebulae as telescopes photographed them, and the Milky Way from outside. Step down to the ground and it is tonight's sky from your own street. Twenty-eight guided trips, read aloud, fly the camera for you; forty nearby star systems have a stage you can fly into. It is a static website: the physics runs in your browser, on public data, and every number on screen says where it came from.

Why

• Learning about space should be free and simple. No account, no adverts, no tracking, no install. Open a link and you are looking at the sky as it is now.
• It should run anywhere. A school, a university, a kindergarten or a village library can run its own copy, on an old laptop, with no internet at all.
• It should be honest. Everything drawn is measured, modelled or illustrative, and says which.
• It is built in the open, in the AI era. Much of this project was written by people working with AI assistants, held to account by tests and by sources. That makes it a good time to join in: an idea, a correction or a fix from you can be on the live site within days. Issues, fixes and ideas are all welcome.

What you can do with it

Take a guided trip. Tonight from your street, why the Moon changes shape, the life of a star, black holes, back to the Moon with Artemis. 28 trips and 215 stops, read aloud, with captions and music.	Stand where we have been. Twenty places on the Moon and twelve on Mars that spacecraft reached, each on its own ground, with the facts and their sources on the card.
Look up from your own street. The sky from the ground: figures, grids, tonight's best passes and planets, a city, town or dark sky, and a red night mode.	Read the living Earth. Seven maps of data measured from orbit, from NASA: sea temperature, sea ice, rain, plant life and more, each with its key and its source.

• Follow anything in orbit. The ISS, Hubble, Starlink trains, debris: where it is, how fast, whether it is in sunlight, and when it passes over you.
• See the deep sky. Real photographs of 30 nebulae and galaxies in their true places, with an exposure control, and the whole sky in other light: infrared, microwaves, gamma rays.
• Go anywhere, at any time. Fly from a rooftop to the edge of the Milky Way; drag the time scrubber to the next eclipse; follow eight missions along their own timelines.
• Teach with it. Present mode sets a trip's words large for a room and waits for your clicker. After one visit it works offline, and it installs like an app.
• Put it in your page. One live object or one trip as an embed, with no tracker and no cookie.
• Use it on a phone. The same map, one sheet, one thumb.

Also: live clouds, storms, lightning and the aurora on the Earth · close-up map tiles of the Earth, the Moon and Mars · today's sunspot groups · eclipses computed for any date · 70 spacecraft and shape models · fires, volcanoes and icebergs from NASA's EONET and the wind from NOAA's GFS · "Point your phone" at the sky · a passport of places opened and one true sentence on the home · reels that play on their own on a screen in a lobby (spec 0036) · artist's impressions, labelled so, of planets nobody has seen · shareable links, postcards and a photo mode · full keyboard control.

Links

The address bar is the view: what is selected, the moment on the clock, the map and the trip stop are all in it, so copying it is sharing what you see. A trip has two link forms. /t/<trip>.html is a small page of its own with the trip's picture and words, the one to paste into a chat or a post so it unfurls; it opens the app at the trip. #trip=<trip>&stop=<n> is the app itself at that stop, the one the address bar shows while you fly. Moving through a trip does not add to the browser's history: Back is not "previous stop", it leaves the trip for the page you came from (the trip has its own Previous). Back and Forward between two links you opened put the whole view back each time: the selection, the clock, the map and the stop.

Run it locally (the long version)

git clone https://github.com/Sara-Managed-Projects/space-radar.git
cd space-radar
python3 -m http.server 8177 --directory site      # then open http://localhost:8177

That is the whole toolchain: there is nothing to install or compile. For Windows, classrooms, a school server, a USB stick, and running with no internet, see docs/RUN_LOCALLY.md. Each release is a zip that already contains a saved copy of the data and starts offline.

How it is built

site/        the whole app, served as it is: plain ES modules, three.js, no bundler, no framework
registry/    YAML files that say what exists: worlds, layers, data sources, trips, models, budgets
scripts/     generators that turn a registry into the JavaScript the browser reads, and the checks
tests/       more than 150 node and python test files; no browser needed
harvest/     a small scheduled job that saves each public data source for the site to read
docs/        running it, a first pull request, a map of the code, embedding, releasing

Adding a moon, a landing site, a search alias or a whole trip is a row in a registry, not a code change, and CI holds the project to that. Satellites move by SGP4, asteroids and comets by Kepler's equation, the Sun, Moon and planets by an ephemeris library, all in the browser.

Contributing

It is meant to be easy and fun.

• Your first pull request, in ten minutes: fork, run, change, check with one command (scripts/check.sh), and what happens after you open it. Or press Open in Codespaces and install nothing.

• A map of the code: one page, with the file to edit for the twelve commonest changes.

• Four ways in: fix a fact, translate, add a sky culture or a trip stop, or write code.

• CONTRIBUTING.md: recipes for a trip, an object or a layer, and the style. GOVERNANCE.md says who decides; CONTRIBUTORS.md says who has helped.

• Start with a good first issue: pick one by track, from the ones nobody has begun. Larger work is marked help wanted.

• Found a wrong number or a wrong name? A data-accuracy report with a source is gold.

• Have an idea, or teach with it? Tell us.

• Please read the Code of Conduct. Security reports go through SECURITY.md; other help is in SUPPORT.md.

Releases come out about monthly; see the changelog and how we release.

Data and credits

Space Radar stands on data and work that other people publish for free. Thank you.

Data and APIs

Catalogues, maps, models and pictures

Code, type and sound

CREDITS.md has every one of them with its licence, its required credit line and what we changed. None of these organisations endorses Space Radar.

Forking it? Read CelesTrak's usage policy first: one download per file per two hours. The app's cache honours it; please keep that.

Licence

• The code (everything we wrote: site/js, site/css, scripts, tests, harvest, tools, the registries and these documents) is MIT.
• Data and assets keep their owners' licences: vendored libraries (MIT, ISC, BSD), planet maps (CC BY 4.0 and public domain), star catalogues (CC BY-SA 4.0, BSD), photographs (CC BY 4.0), the other-light sky tiles (ODbL 1.0), the constellation pictures (Free Art License 1.3, copyleft: site/data/skyart/LICENSE.txt), other peoples' sky figures (CC BY-SA 4.0), NASA models (public domain), fonts (SIL OFL 1.1), music (CC0). Data fetched live or saved under site/data/v1/ belongs to its publisher under the publisher's terms. CREDITS.md is the full list, including the few terms we have not been able to confirm.
• The GitHub mark in the app is GitHub's trademark, used unmodified under GitHub's logo rules.

_{Built with real orbital mechanics and a lot of respect for the people who publish the data for free.}