Neo Radar: A browser-based orbital mechanics engine with 41k real asteroids

daviazpen

Hi HN! I'm Davi, a 17-year-old developer from Brazil, and I've spent the last few months building NEO Radar, a browser-based orbital mechanics engine focused on Near-Earth Objects. The goal wasn't to build another Solar System viewer, but to understand how orbital propagation actually works and implement as much of it as I could from first principles. Some highlights: • 41,812 real asteroids from the Minor Planet Center • JPL Horizons ephemerides • Newton-Raphson solver for Kepler's equation • Adaptive RK4 N-body integration • Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation • Real planetary perturbations • Interactive 2D heliocentric visualization One architectural decision I'm particularly happy with is that the physics engine is completely isolated from rendering. The integrator has no DOM, Canvas or fetch dependencies—it simply outputs state vectors that the renderer consumes. The repository also includes benchmarks, unit tests and documentation describing the numerical methods and the limitations of the model. This project taught me far more about numerical methods and orbital mechanics than I expected when I started. I'd really appreciate feedback, especially from anyone with experience in astrodynamics, numerical simulation or scientific visualization. I'm sure there are many things that can still be improved. GitHub: https://github.com/azpeeen/NEO-Radar

Catloafdev

Well it seems to be hug-of-death'd - how are you loading 41k points of data?

markstock

Please don't call this "full N-body dynamics" if only the outer planets are involved in the integration.