NASA Near-Earth Object Tracker: Design Summary and Purpose

The NASA NEO Tracker is a Streamlit-powered interactive web application that utilizes NASA’s NeoWs (Near Earth Object Web Service) API to track and visualize asteroid data based on user-selected date ranges. Its goal is to make space hazard awareness accessible through clear insights into asteroid size, proximity, and risk levels.

Development Summary

  • Frontend/UI: Developed with Streamlit, enabling real-time date input, dynamic charts, data filters, and detailed asteroid views.

  • Backend/API Integration: Uses a modular fetch_asteroid_data function to pull data from the NeoWs API, limited to a 7-day window for compliance.

  • Data Handling: Transforms nested JSON into a structured pandas DataFrame with derived statistics like average diameter and custom hazard levels.

  • Visualizations:

    • Histogram of size distribution by hazard classification.

    • Scatter plot showing miss distance vs. size with velocity bubbles.

  • Filtering & Sorting: Users can refine asteroid listings by size and hazard status, and sort by attributes such as name, distance, and speed.

  • Details Panel: Displays full metadata and a computed hazard level score to contextualize risk.

Purpose

The application empowers educators, space enthusiasts, and researchers to:

  • Monitor asteroid activity near Earth in a user-friendly way

  • Understand potential impact risks via intuitive visuals and filters

  • Learn how asteroid size, speed, and proximity relate to threat classification

The app promotes space awareness, data-driven insight, and API literacy, making raw NASA data actionable for a wide audience.