SatTrack

Alright so this one’s a throwback – Smart India Hackathon 2022. ISRO had a problem statement about satellite tracking and trajectory prediction. Our team picked it up thinking “how hard can it be?”

Turns out, pretty hard.

The idea was simple – build a platform that could pull satellite information, display orbital data, and predict trajectories. We went with Django because at the time i was deep in the Django ecosystem and it made sense for rapid prototyping.

What we built

A Django REST API that could:

• Fetch satellite information from TLE (Two-Line Element) data
• Display orbital parameters
• Serve it all through clean API endpoints

The backend was functional – clean models, proper migrations, endpoints that actually worked. We had the API part down solid.

Where it fell apart

The trajectory prediction. Orbital mechanics is no joke – you can’t just linear-interpolate a satellite’s position and call it a day. Keplerian elements, perturbation models, SGP4 propagation – the math was genuinely hard. We got close but not close enough to impress the judges.

We lost. Fair and square.

What i actually learned

More than any tutorial could teach me. Working under a 36-hour hackathon deadline with a real ISRO problem statement forced us to think about API design, data modeling, and real-time data pipelines in ways classroom projects never did.

Also learned that orbital mechanics should probably be left to people who actually paid attention in physics class.

This was my first serious backend project and honestly it set the tone for everything that came after – Django became my go-to for a while because of this.