Data source: NASA JPL SBDB Close-Approach Data API (https://ssd-api.jpl.nasa.gov/cad.api) and NASA JPL Small-Body Database API
Tools: Built with React Native + Expo, rendered with Canvas/WebGL. The visualization plots each NEO's current distance from Earth, with object size estimated from absolute magnitude (H). Color indicates proximity.
This is from a free app I built called NEO Radar https://stellardev.dev that tracks near-Earth objects in real time. It pulls data from multiple NASA JPL APIs including Horizons for ephemeris calculations and SBDB for orbital parameters.
What surprised me most building this was the sheer volume — there are typically 15-25 objects within 0.05 AU (~7.5 million km) of Earth at any given time, and the number keeps growing as detection improves.
Posted by alvaroantelo
3 Comments
This looks interesting so I tried your site, but I cannot zoom on my phone or tablet. No scroll wheel. I cannot see any nearby objects.
The UI needs some work. I suggest showing your site to friends, but don’t help them navigate your site at all. Just watch what they do to learn what is confusing.
This is really cool. The density makes it feel chaotic at first, but once you zoom out and see Earth centered with the orbital paths it clicks.
The 15 to 25 objects within 0.05 AU at any time is the wild part. It sounds scary until you realize how big 0.05 AU actually is. Detection improving faster than the actual approach rate is a nice reminder that the sky isn’t suddenly getting more crowded, we’re just getting better at seeing it.
would be cool to overlay Moon orbit for scale. 0.05 AU sounds scary, but most ppl don’t intuit 7.5M km – showing 384k km ring would instantly reframe it