Awesome Space

A curated list of space-related code, APIs, data, and other resources.

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Table of Contents

Astronomy

Astronomy APIs

AstroBin API - AstroBin is an image hosting website specifically targeted to astrophotographers. Its API offers a basic set of RESTful endpoints. Currently the API is read-only, and allows you to get data about images, and perform basic searches.

astrometry.net - "If you have astronomical imaging of the sky with celestial coordinates you do not know—or do not trust—then Astrometry.net is for you. Input an image and we'll give you back astrometric calibration meta-data, plus lists of known objects falling inside the field of view."

Open Astronomy Catalog API - The Open Astronomy Catalog API (OACAPI) offers a lightweight, simple way to access data available via the Open Astronomy Catalogs (e.g. the Open Supernova, Tidal Disruption, Kilonova, and Fast Stars Catalogs).

SpaceXDB-Api - SpaceXDB is a website containing SpaceX launch information and telemetry.

Astronomy Software

Radio Astronomy

VIRGO - An open-source Spectrometer for Radio Astronomy

Visualization

Celestia - Free real-time 3D visualization of space. (See also Celestia Motherload for many addons.)

Harmony of the Spheres - Newtonian gravity and space simulator that runs in your browser

KStars - KStars is free, open source, cross-platform astronomy software. It provides many features, including a graphical simulation of the night sky, observing planner, a sky calendar tool, an FOV editor, and more.

NASA Eyes - Immersible apps to explore the Earth and solar system

Orb Viewer - Visualization of all the asteroids in the MPC database.

Orbit Simulator - A powerful numerical integration tool. "By performing n-body simulations, you can study the orbits of planets, moons, asteroids, or any object in the universe."

Stellarium - Open source planetarium for your computer

SDKs & Software Development Tools

ASCL.net - A free online registry for source code of interest to astronomers and astrophysicists

AstroKit - A web-based toolset for performing lightcurve photometry

astrometry.net - Code and an API for generating astrometric calibration meta-data

AstroPy - Collection of software packages written in Python and designed for use in astronomy

Rebound - A multi-purpose N-body integrator

Skyfield - Skyfield computes positions for the stars, planets, and satellites in orbit around the Earth.

Spacekit.js - An open-source library for building interactive Javascript- and WebGL-based space visualizations.

Community

Learning Materials

NITARP - NITARP, the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program, gets teachers & students involved in authentic astronomical research.

RDFvocab - A collection of linked data ontologies (semantically linked representations) that describe astronomical and space engineering concepts. Can be used to link popular data sets like DBPedia.

Resources and references on the topic of space exploration - StackExchange list of books, manuals, courses, and more.

Space Hackathons and Challenges

ActInSpace - A hackathon about space app, every even year, launched by the french CNES.

Space Apps Challenge - NASA-led initiative organized in collaboration with Booz Allen Hamilton, Mindgrub and SecondMuse.

Data

Astronomy Data

Data Directories

api.nasa.gov - NASA's API portal

Data.gov - NASA The US Federal government's open data portal page for NASA data sets. If you search by Bureaus, Organizations, or Publishers, you'll find additional space-related data sets from NASA/GSFC, NOAA, the Space Science Technology Directorate, selected universities, and more.

data.nasa.gov - Continually growing catalog of publicly available NASA datasets, APIs, visualizations, and more

images.nasa.gov - Search NASA's informational image and video archive

MAST - A NASA-funded site that provides astronomical data archives focused on scientific data sets in the optical, ultraviolet, and near-IR.

Data Wrangling Tools

orbital-cotwo-web - A data processing pipeline and web server that can dump HDF5 files from NASA's Orbital Carbon Observatory 2 mission into an SQL database.

Earth

Extrasolar Planets

Launches

Launch Library - A free to use API for a repository of rocket launch information that application developers can use.

Space Launch Now API - Retrieve current information on launches, spacecraft, and more.

Space Launch Report - Website listing launchers and their specs as well as launch reports dating back decades

Unofficial SpaceX REST API - Open Source REST API for rocket, core, capsule, pad, and launch data

Solar System Data

Asterank - Asterank is a scientific and economic database of over 600,000 asteroids.

astorbDB - A database of orbital elements and observed physical properties (when available) for all known minor planets in the Solar System.

IAU Minor Planet Center - Clearing house for observations of asteroids and other smaller solar system bodies

LROC QuickMap - Quality 2D and 3D maps of the moon

NASA's Planetary Data System - A long-term archive of digital data products returned from NASA's planetary missions

NASA's Solar System Treks - Access surface elevation profiles, sun angles, 3D print files, and VR experiences in our solar system

Orbits

Celestrak - Celestrak is the world's oldest source for orbital element sets (and related software and educational materials).

JPL's HORIZONS - Generate ephemerides for solar-system bodies

Space Physics Data Facility - Web-based services for survey and high resolution data and trajectories

Space Debris

Stuff In Space - Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL. Updates daily.

Spacecraft

General Software

Ground Stations

FoxTelem - FoxTelem is used by a network of ground stations to retrieve the telemetry and experiment data from the Fox Satellites.

Open Satellite Project - Ongoing effort to develop open-source software for the receipt and decoding of satellite data using software-defined radio (SDR) hardware

Phase 4 Ground - Open source digital broadband satellite and terrestrial radio systems, part of Open Research Institute

SatNOGS - A global network of satellite ground stations, designed as an open source participatory project

Mission Control

COSMOS - Open source desktop mission control software

Open MCT - Ames's next-generation mission control framework for visualization of data on desktop and mobile devices.

Mission Design

Simulation

42 - Attitude and trajectory simulation of Spacecraft (NASA)

Basilisk - C/C++ astrodynamics and attitude control simulation (includes Python scripting).

Gazebo - Robotics simulator often used for planetary rovers

NOS3 - NASA Operational Simulator for Small Satellites

Trick - End-to-end physics simulation package, useful for simulating missions (but requires orbital dynamics models). C, C++, with Python (SWIG) interface.

Spacecraft Hardware

GNSS Receivers

libswiftnav and libsbp (Swift binary protocol for communicating with receiver hardware)

Radios

LFR transceiver - Little Free Radio (LFR) is an open source, command, telemetry, and data radio for cubesats.

OpenLST transceiver hardware and firmware - OpenLST is an open source, proven radio design for communicating with remote instruments, vehicles, and stations using low-cost commercial components. Based on Planet Labs' telemetry/command radio.

Star Trackers

MIT Tetra and its fork, ESA Tetra - Open source star tracker which relies more extensively on hashes for faster lookups

Oresat star tracker - Open star tracker hardware with software, based on UPNanosatLab's openstartracker (which doesn't compile or have hardware)

Spacecraft Software

Core Flight System - NASA portable and extendable flight software framework with extensive flight heritage and a growing suite of applications and platform ports

FossaSat-1 - Hardware designs and software for the FossaSat-1 Pocketqube satellite (GitHub)

JPL F Prime - F Prime (FÊ¹) is a component-driven framework that enables rapid development and deployment of spaceflight and other embedded software applications, originally developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

KubOS - An open-source flight software framework for satellites

LibreCube - Open source space and Earth exploration. Defining a generic architecture of system of systems that have standardized interfaces makes it possible to combine and reuse elements for various applications

NanoSat MO Framework - A software framework for nanosatellites based on the latest CCSDS standards. Developed by ESA and used in OPS-SAT mission (GitHub)

UPSat - Open source satellite software and hardware

Legacy

Apollo 11 Guidance Code - Original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code for the command and lunar modules

Tracking & Orbit Determination

AstriaGraph - Open source data and visualization of all known objects in Earth’s orbit

Astro::Coord::ECI::TLE - Perl implementation of NORAD progation models

Gpredict - Open source, real-time satellite tracking and orbit prediction application.

jspredict - A Javascript port of the popular predict satellite tracking library.

Orb Calc - Generate positions of objects from orbital parameters.

Orekit - An accurate and efficient core layer for space flight dynamics applications written in Java.

Predict - PHP implementation of the SGP4 and SDP4 models for prediction, based on Gpredict

python-sgp4 - Python implementation of most recent version of the SGP4 satellite tracking algorithm

satellite.js - A library to make satellite propagation via TLEs possible on the web. Provides the functions necessary for SGP4/SDP4 calculations, as callable javascript. Also provides functions for coordinate transforms.

Space-Track.org - Programmatic access to Two-Line Elements, Orbital Mean-Elements, satellite catalog information, space debris, and more.

Where the ISS at? - Real time tracking of the International Space Station, with email push notifications for upcoming passes and a REST API for integrations. Based on Predict

Visualization

Cesium.js - An open-source JavaScript library for world-class 3D globes and maps

Gaia Sky - Real-time, 3D, astronomy visualization software developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission. Runs on Windows, Linux and macOS.

License

To the extent possible under law, The Orbital Index has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.