WATS 4030 Web Development Capstone - Planning Document

RoveTrak Mars Rover Mission App

Introduction

It is easy to forget that mankind has an army of probes, satellites, and rovers exploring

our solar system and sending a constant stream of data back to Earth. Among these

robotic extraterrestrial citizens are three impetuous Martian rovers: Spirit, Opportunity,

and Curiosity. Each of these rovers represents a landmark achievement in humankind’s

exploration of space and other planets. I propose to build a web application--called

RoveTrak-- that provides users with an interesting and accessible way to learn about the

missions of the three Martian rovers and enjoy some of the data that they have collected.

Concept

RoveTrak will be a highly accessible, simple, and clean application that, in its first

iteration, will provide background and history for each Martian rover, an up-to-date

mission manifest, and the most recent photo imagery. Thus, the application will consist

of three primary views.

History view

The History view will provide the historical background for each rover mission, including

team information, launch dates, Mars arrival information and key findings.

Manifest view

The Manifest view will populate the application with a current mission manifest for the

selected rover via the NASA Open API. Mission information includes:

name Name of the Rover

landing_date The Rover's landing date on Mars

launch_date The Rover's launch date from Earth

status The Rover's mission status

max_sol The most recent Martian sol from which photos exist

max_date The most recent Earth date from which photos exist

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total_photos Number of photos taken by that Rover

Imagery view

The Imagery view will allow users to select any of the available cameras on any rover and

view the most recent image taken from that camera. There are nine available cameras

across the three rovers and images from all the cameras are available through the NASA

Open API.

ROVER CAMERAS

Abbreviation Camera Curiousity Opportunity Spirit

FHAZ Front Hazard Avoidance Camera ✔ ✔ ✔

RHAZ Rear Hazard Avoidance Camera ✔ ✔ ✔

MAST Mast Camera ✔

CHEMCAM Chemistry and Camera Complex ✔

MAHLI Mars Hand Lens Imager ✔

MARDI Mars Descent Imager ✔

NAVCAM Navigation Camera ✔ ✔ ✔

PANCAM Panoramic Camera ✔ ✔

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MINITES Miniature Thermal Emission

Spectrometer (Mini-TES)

✔ ✔

Technology

I will utilize the Yeoman, Bower, Grunt workflow and Bootstrap 3 to scaffold the

application. The application itself will be built as a single page application with HTML5,

CSS, Angular JS and the Ionic mobile framework. The initial version of the app will be

deployed on GitHub Pages.

Design Comps

The design comps below were built with Ionic Creator.

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Design concepts

The design comps above illustrate one approach to the mobile layout and app flow.

Users would be greeted by a splash screen and then could drill down into information

about one of the three rovers. From the rover view, users could select the Mission view,

shown in the middle image, or the Camera view, shown on the left. The camera view

would allow users to select one of the respective rover’s cameras. Doing so will display

the most recent image transmitted by that camera.

The look and feel of the app should be ‘Martian.’ A warm, reddish palette will be used for

menus, buttons, headers, etc. Background images, as in the examples above, can be

drawn from the many publicly-available images shared by the NASA and the rover

missions. Design choices around typography should suggest a clean, advanced UI, or

futuristic feel (all sans serif).

Project Tasks and Timeline

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Future directions

The first iteration of RoverTrak will necessarily be streamlined in its functionality. Many

possibilities exist, however, for expanding the scope of the app. Future features might

include some of the following:

● Maps of Mars and rover location, paths

● Ability to save favorite images

● Educational resources

● Mission status alerts

● Latest rover news from NASA and JPL

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