A real-time NASA mission monitor wrapped in a retro pixel-art game style. PixelOrbit lets you track the universe's coolest spacecraft, serving up live telemetry data like orbit paths, speed, and altitude in a nostalgic 8-bit interface.
I’m building PixelOrbit, a retro pixel-art website that turns real NASA spacecraft telemetry into something anyone can understand.
This week I finished the first working version of the project.
I built a provider system where every spacecraft has its own JavaScript file (iss.js, hubble.js, etc.) responsible for fetching and processing data.
The UI doesn’t need to know anything about the spacecraft itself—it simply asks the current provider for data and displays the result. This should make adding future spacecraft incredibly easy.
I also reorganized the entire project structure, added a testing UI, and got live telemetry working for both the ISS and Hubble.
After spending far more time fighting GitHub Pages, CORS restrictions, HTTPS issues, and random API limitations than actually coding features, I finally managed to get everything running online.
🌍 Live website: https://leotsio.github.io/PixelOrbit/
What data would you actually want to see for spacecraft like the ISS, Hubble, JWST, Voyager 1, or Perseverance?
I’m trying to focus on the stats that are genuinely fascinating rather than just technically available.
I’m building PixelOrbit, a pixel-art website that transforms real NASA spacecraft telemetry into interactive visualizations that are easier to understand.
Today I completed the first milestone of the project: the Pixelator.
The Pixelator takes an image from either a local file or an internet URL and automatically:
The image below shows the first successful conversion of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Most of today’s work was spent debugging dependencies and getting the background-removal pipeline running on my 11-year-old MacBook Air, but the first version is now working and ready for the next stage of the project 🚀
