Solar Explorer

Goal

An educational, frontend-only web app that lets you explore a procedurally-rendered scale model of the solar system. Navigation runs from the Sun all the way to Voyager 1, and the interface is bilingual (English/Spanish). The project demonstrates how to build an interactive, visually engaging astronomy experience without relying on pre-rendered images: every celestial body and spacecraft is drawn in real time on canvas.

How it works

1. Linear mode Vertical scrolling view that travels across the solar system at scale, with distance tracking and contextual facts for each body as it appears.
2. Ellipse mode Orbital map showing the bodies moving in real time, with adjustable speed (1×/2×/5×) to observe celestial mechanics.
3. Mission mode Replays historical spacecraft trajectories on the orbital map, recreating their journeys across the solar system.
4. Procedural rendering All celestial bodies and spacecraft are drawn on canvas with Phaser 4 — no pre-rendered images. Elements are clickable and surface educational information.

Architecture

The repository is a monorepo with two packages: the frontend (Astro + Phaser application) and the infrastructure (AWS CDK hosting stack). Development follows test-driven practices with Vitest and jsdom and a strict separation of concerns. Deployment is automated through GitHub Actions, which runs the tests before building and publishing to S3 served by CloudFront.

AWS services

• S3 Hosting for the static site generated by Astro
• CloudFront CDN for global content distribution
• ACM TLS certificate for HTTPS
• Route 53 DNS and domain routing
• CloudFormation / CDK Infrastructure as code in TypeScript
• GitHub Actions CI/CD: runs tests, build, and automated deployment

Stack