Moonshot - Track the Artemis II mission from your Mac
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A macOS menu bar app built with SwiftUI that tracks NASA’s Artemis II mission in real time, showing mission phases, countdowns to key lunar flyby and return events, mission elapsed time, crew, live telemetry context, and a space-themed Earth-Moon-Orion timeline. Uses publicly available NASA mission data and timeline updates.
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Product Hunt
Hey everyone!
I've always been fascinated with everything space and NASA and while I was consuming absolutely everything I could about Artemis II, I started to think I'd love an app to track all of the phases for me. So I built it over the weekend.
Features:
Live countdowns to key Artemis II events
Mission phases including outbound, lunar flyby, return leg, re-entry, and splashdown
Mission elapsed time (MET)
Artemis II crew roster
NASA-sourced timeline and public mission update data
Menu bar-only macOS app built with SwiftUI
It should take you all the way to splashdown.
Hope you all enjoy, and if you have any feedback, drop it in the comments! :)
@aaronoleary Congrats, quick question: beyond Artemis II, any plans to expand to future Artemis missions or other NASA programs like Gateway?
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@swati_paliwal Hi Swati! Yup, I'm considering expanding this into a kind of Flighty but for space missions, covering missions around the world. Very few get this level of public attention and I'd love to bring them to light.
@aaronoleary This is pretty cool, didn’t realize there was this much structured data available for Artemis missions.
Are you pulling this straight from NASA APIs or doing some processing in between? how real-time this actually is?
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@moh_codokiai
There's no real clean API to pull this from.
I’m using NASA’s public Artemis mission pages and AROW tracking resources for the mission schedule and trajectory data, and then I do some processing to turn that into the countdowns, phases, event states, and visual mission path in the app. For some orbital context, I also derive values from structured trajectory/vector data rather than just showing raw page text.
It’s more “near-real-time from public mission data” than direct raw flight telemetry. It's got a high level of accuracy but it isn't designed to replace say NASA's own tracker. My thinking with this is: an app that I can check on the fly with a high-enough level of accuracy rather than browse to a new tab and risk context-switching.
I'd actually love to see a mission view. A trajectory of the path taken by the Rocket. The whole slingshot around the moon in real-time. That would be incredibleeeeee!!!! Awesome work 🚀
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@richard_andrews4 I was thinking this too! Gonna see if I can get it done!
@aaronoleary Rooting for you mate!!!
NovaVoice
That is so good, like reading scientific journals!
What are your feature plans?
I see in the comments that you think about something like Flighty for space missions, what about something like space history & launches timeline with visualizations and historical facts?
@rustam_khasanov mission elapsed time is such a cool detail. I can quickly see how far the mission has progressed.
Looks fantastic. Congrats on the launch.
Is this just limited to accessing from the US? I’m in the UK and data never loads.
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@craigcpaterson Should load! I'm in Ireland and it's working. Lemme check to see if I spot anything
@craigcpaterson @aaronoleary Sadly no go for launch for me either (Canada)
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@craigcpaterson @icon_kolaszewski Hey! Can you try download the latest release here? https://github.com/aaronoleary/artemis-ii-lunar-countdown/releases/tag/v1.0
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@craigcpaterson Hey! Can you try download the latest release here? https://github.com/aaronoleary/artemis-ii-lunar-countdown/releases/tag/v1.0
@aaronoleary sadly, no change 😞
Hey, this looks very cool! Going to try :)
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@antoninkus Thanks! Hope you like it!
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Wait the details on this are actually insane, telemetry is 🤌. Awesome job, @aaronoleary!!
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@gabe It started as a simple tracker for the moon flyby phase but the nerd in me wouldn't sleep until I gathered every useful piece of data I could and presented it lol
Love that you built this over a weekend, the attention to detail with the mission phases and telemetry context is really impressive. Having it live in the menu bar is perfect for staying updated without constantly tab-switching during the mission. @aaronoleary are you planning to support future NASA missions beyond Artemis II?
Product Hunt
@marcelo_farr Hey Marcelo!
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, potentially. I'm half thinking of expanding into a mobile app, kind of like a flighty but for space missions. There's a ton of big things in space every year that aren't as publicised that I think people would be interested in.
My Financé
sick! i love that there is a launch tag for `Space`. Is this artisanal code or did you sling with an agent?
Product Hunt
@catt_marroll the coolest launch tag. Artisanal lmao with one pass for an issue!
Ogoron
This is such a cool niche execution : love how you turned a complex mission like Artemis II into something so accessible right from the menu bar. The real-time aspect + mission timeline is a great touch.
Also feels very aligned with the current wave of making complex systems more observable and understandable.
We actually launched on Product Hunt today as well — working on Ogoron, an AI system that automatically generates and maintains test coverage as products evolve. Different space, same love for making complexity manageable
Good luck with the launch!