Asteroid Tracker
I was sitting here one night wondering how much money is floating around above me right now. That sent me down a rabbit hole of NASA APIs, spectral classification, and commodity spot prices. An hour later, this existed.
Not an expert. Not a perfect tool. But the data is free, the math is real, and now whenever I want to know what the asteroid that finally hits us is worth — I've got a way.
scanning near-Earth objects...
How this happened
Asteroid mining has always been one of those things that lives in the back of my brain. Not in a "I'm going to start a space company" way — more like a persistent daydream. Read a few too many sci-fi novels about building giant mirrors in space and suddenly you're Googling orbital mechanics at your desk instead of working. (Not an admission of guilt. Can't be used against me. Sorry, Tony.) That kind of daydream.
I'd been thinking about what kind of things would be cool to build with AI, something that shows what you can actually do with it, and the question just popped up: how much money is flying over my head right now?
The Real Point
Is this groundbreaking? No. Is it useful? Not really. Is it cool? Meh — but it took less than an hour to make.
I'm not an astrophysicist. I don't work with spectral data for a living. But this tool chains together three independent APIs, runs the output through a multi-step enrichment pipeline, and produces something that's as accurate as it can be for what it is. That's the real demo here — today, with AI, the barrier to entry on a lot of things is way lower than it used to be.
The data is free and out there. Someone's gotta use it.
Data sources
Three APIs, cached server-side and in your browser.
Today's close-approach objects — names, sizes, speeds, miss distances, hazard flags.
Spectral classification, orbital class, composition type. Most come back unknown — that's normal.
Daily commodity spot prices — iron, nickel, cobalt, platinum, gold. Hardcoded fallbacks if the API is down.
How the valuation works
Estimate the mass
NASA gives us a diameter range. Average it, assume a sphere, multiply by the density for that spectral type. Not perfect — asteroids aren't spheres — but it gets you in the right neighborhood.
Apply the composition
Each spectral type maps to a known mineral profile from meteorite analysis. C-types: carbon and water. M-types: 88% iron with traces of platinum and gold. Break the mass into individual metals.
Price it
Multiply each metal's mass by current commodity spot prices. The total is theoretical raw-material value — what it'd be worth if you could get it down here. Nobody's doing that yet. Space mirrors, anyone?