Ship
Changes requested
Reposted by
@KarthikB
Pass Predictor: Done and Shipped 🛰️
Added the second big feature to my ISS Live Tracker: click anywhere on the map, and it tells you when the ISS will next be visible from that exact spot, not just when it passes overhead, but whether it’ll actually be dark enough and sunlit enough to see with your own eyes.
Started by building this with real orbital mechanics using satellite.js, fetching the ISS’s TLE (orbital data) and calculating look angles myself. Got it fully working locally. Then deployment broke almost everything:
My ISS position API was using http://, but GitHub Pages serves over HTTPS. Browsers block that mix silently. Switched to an HTTPS-only API.
The TLE data source (Celestrak) returned a 403 error specifically when called from my live domain, even though it worked fine locally — likely some kind of bot protection treating GitHub Pages differently.
At that point, with the deadline close, I made the call to stop fighting the orbital math myself and switched to a purpose-built free API (Pollux Labs’ ISS Pass API) that does the prediction directly. Simpler, more reliable, and it even factors in visibility (daylight/shadow), which my own calculation didn’t.
Also did a UI pass — added a tagline, a live status badge, grouped the info text into a proper panel, and a favicon.
Live demo: https://droid678.github.io/ISS-tracker/
Repo: https://github.com/droid678/ISS-tracker.git
Pass Predictor: Done and Shipped 🛰️
Added the second big feature to my ISS Live Tracker: click anywhere on the map, and it tells you when the ISS will next be visible from that exact spot, not just when it passes overhead, but whether it’ll actually be dark enough and sunlit enough to see with your own eyes.
Started by building this with real orbital mechanics using satellite.js, fetching the ISS’s TLE (orbital data) and calculating look angles myself. Got it fully working locally. Then deployment broke almost everything:
My ISS position API was using http://, but GitHub Pages serves over HTTPS. Browsers block that mix silently. Switched to an HTTPS-only API.
The TLE data source (Celestrak) returned a 403 error specifically when called from my live domain, even though it worked fine locally — likely some kind of bot protection treating GitHub Pages differently.
At that point, with the deadline close, I made the call to stop fighting the orbital math myself and switched to a purpose-built free API (Pollux Labs’ ISS Pass API) that does the prediction directly. Simpler, more reliable, and it even factors in visibility (daylight/shadow), which my own calculation didn’t.
Also did a UI pass — added a tagline, a live status badge, grouped the info text into a proper panel, and a favicon.
Live demo: https://droid678.github.io/ISS-tracker/
Repo: https://github.com/droid678/ISS-tracker.git
Started my ISS Live Tracker for Stardance 🛰️
Decided to build a real-time tracker for the International Space Station after realizing I wanted something that felt genuinely mine, not a pre-made project idea.
Built with plain HTML/CSS/JS + Leaflet.js for the map — no frameworks, kept it simple so I could actually understand every line.
What’s working so far:
-Live ISS position fetched from the Open Notify API, updating every few seconds
-A moving marker with a custom satellite icon
-A trail line showing the ISS’s recent path
-Real-time day/night shading on the map, using a library that calculates the sun’s actual position
-A full dark theme dashboard redesign
Funniest bug: my map completely broke and the console said map is not a function, turned out, autocomplete had renamed my L.map(…) calls to LargestContentfulPaint.map(…) without me noticing. Took a while to spot since it looked so plausible at a glance.
Next up: either a pass predictor (so you can tell when the ISS is visible from your location) or expanding into a broader space weather dashboard.
