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Here is a detailed explanation of our project, you can find the answers to the following questions: What exactly does it do? How does it work? What benefits does it have? What do you hope to achieve? What tools, coding languages, hardware, or software did you use to develop your project?

The design of the site was made using simple HTML and CSS markup languages. We used the Visual Studio Code IDE for editing the code. We also made a simple and user friendly design which includes tabs that can be used to travel easily across the site. The site tabs are made using the “href” function in HTML.

The Map was the major part of our project, which most of our labour went to. First we had to get the NASA Landsat data and grid sheets. So we headed over to NASA's site to download the “.KML” files. One “.KML” file slices the earth to grids, and the other one shows the centres, the centres are used to give information and coordinates of the selected places. After downloading the required files, we had to find a basemap for the grids to sit on.

OpenStreetMap is a project which aims to provide a world map that is free to use and open to the public. We used LeafletJS, an open source project that makes embedding OpenStreetMap Maps to HTML pages possible. After putting the Map onto our site via LeafletJS, all that was left was putting the grids to the world map.

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In order to display the grids, first we needed to convert the “.KML” files to GeoJSON files. We first need to explain JSON (Java Script Object Notation) to explain GeoJSON. JSON is an open standard format which was derived from JavaScript, though nowadays it is readable by many modern programming languages, it uses human readable text to store and transmit data objects. GeoJSON is a variant of JSON which is made to store primarily geographical information. After converting the “.KML” files to GeoJSON files, we had to connect the geographical values to our map which primarily runs on JavaScript.

JavaScript is a scripting language and it is the literal beating heart of the web. It is called a scripting language and not a programming language because it was made specifically to run on the web. There is a famous saying by Jeff Atwood, an American programmer, which goes; “If something can be written in JavaScript, it will eventually be written in JavaScript.” I think you get the idea of where this is going, we needed to create a variable that extracts data from the GeoJSON and then be used in JavaScript. So we made a JavaScript file with the same GeoJSON data and using the “var … =” function we were able to create a variable that can be used on our site via JavaScript.

At first glance, it seems like we were done, but we had to do one last thing. Because the NASA file is so large compared to other GeoJSON files, we had to create a tilelayer to the top of our map to prevent any glitches. In order to do that, there is a simple plugin on LeafletJS, which’s source code is available to the public. It is again a javascript file, which can be attached to the HTML document. That way, the tile layer and the map were separated and worked without any glitches.

The site's logo was made by us using Inkscape as a vector image editing software.

You can find the source code on our github page.

At the end, with the help of these tools, we created a simple site that makes working with landsat data easy.

Moments from hackathon

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2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge

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