Asteroid Explorer

Finding asteroids before they find us!
Built as part of the NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge Initiative.
Went live at Minor Planet Center of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, on June 8th, 2015.

Direct query link to four most common asked questions about asteroids.

Asteroid Data from NASA databases, displayed in an easy-to-interpret format.

The most significant asteroids are displayed on a graph.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

I visited a mini-telescope on Harvard Observatory's rooftop!

Links

This project was a part of the NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge, which was highlighted by President Obama on his exit report.
Hear me talk about the project on Youtube.

Design

Slice and dice the astronomical data to quickly narrow down a small set of interested asteroids, based on data attribute/dimension, such as size, speed, approaching distance, orbital period, and how easy we can travel to it.

Build

Web app built with Crossfilter, d3.js, and Highcharts.