Launching today
HelioFleet
HelioFleet: Spacecraft Positions Around the Sun and Earth
3 followers
HelioFleet: Spacecraft Positions Around the Sun and Earth
3 followers
Interactive map of SDO, SOHO, Aditya-L1, Solar Orbiter, Parker Solar Probe, STEREO, BepiColombo and more around the Sun and Earth on any date since 2010. Eclipse presets, alignment search, spot visibility, coordinate export and PNG/PDF snapshots from JPL Horizons ephemerides.
Solar and heliospheric research increasingly relies on multiple spacecraft observing the Sun, solar wind, and heliosphere from different vantage points. But understanding where these spacecraft are relative to one another, what regions they can observe, and how their viewing geometries evolve can require jumping between mission-specific tools and ephemeris data.
HelioFleet brings these views together in one interactive web application.
What it does:
Explore spacecraft positions relative to the Sun and Earth at different dates and times.
Compare multiple heliophysics missions in a common spatial view.
Inspect instrument fields of view and spacecraft observing geometry.
Examine coordinate systems and spatial relationships across missions.
Export visualizations as PNG or PDF, including a legend to help interpret the displayed layers.
Share configurations through links, making it easier to discuss specific observing geometries with collaborators.
The tool is designed to help answer practical questions: Where was a spacecraft during a particular solar event? Which missions had useful viewing geometries? Could two spacecraft have observed related structures from different perspectives? What might the configuration look like during a future observing campaign?
A few engineering challenges include bringing mission geometry into a coherent visualization, representing fields of view in 3D, making time-dependent configurations easy to explore, and keeping the interface useful for both quick inspection and research planning. It also let's you subscribe to upcoming events (in the form of calendars of your choice) of scientific interest like Total Solar Eclipse, Multi-spacecraft co-observing opportunity etc.
I built this primarily for the heliophysics community, but I'd be interested in feedback from anyone working on interactive scientific visualization, orbital mechanics, geospatial interfaces, or time-dependent 3D data.
The project is open source, and contributions, suggestions for additional missions, and reports of discrepancies with other ephemeris or visualization tools are welcome.
Live demo: https://sr-dash.github.io/heliofleet/
Source code: https://github.com/sr-dash/heliofleet
GitHub page: https://sr-dash.github.io