Show HN: Artemis II interactive 3D animation

3 points

2 months ago

I have put together an interactive, scientific, 3D/2D, to-scale animation of the Artemis II mission based on orbit data from NASA JPL.

You can view it here: https://sankara.net/astro/lunar-missions/mission.html?missio...

Features available:

- Real-world orbit data and predictions based on JPL/NASA HORIZONS interface - 2D and 3D - Earth centric or Moon centric views - Earth-Moon relative reference frame - Any camera view (free-form; Craft/Moon/Earth to Craft/Moon/Earth) - Event meta data (orbit maneuvers like TLI) - Realistic textures for Earth and Moon in 3D mode - Astronomically correct rendering of sunlight on Earth and Moon, poles, polar axes, and stellar background - Camera controls (pan, zoom, rotate), timeline controls, visibility controls - A Joy ride feature

This project is part of a larger effort to capture the orbits of all lunar missions wherever orbit data is available: https://sankara.net/astro/lunar-missions/

The software is open source at: https://github.com/kvsankar/moon-mission/ Hope you like it! Thanks for your time.

This project started out in 2014 as a 2D animation for India's Mars Orbiter Mission. I added 3D support for Chandrayaan 2 in 2019. And made it responsive for Chandrayaan 3 in 2023.

There are still some wrinkles with mobile views - trying to fix them. I will be grateful for your feedback. Thanks!