Want to keep up with international space activities, but don’t know where to start? Follow the latest news from the space community with SpaceBoard.

The space industry has never moved faster. A domain once dominated by just two state superpowers is now bustling with new players demonstrating never-before-seen technologies at ever-increasing speeds. Along the way, it’s gotten a lot harder to keep up with all the latest news.

To help my students get to know the international space community as it continues to evolve, I developed SpaceBoard: a digital display that shows the latest space news headlines, space policy activities in the U.S. Congress, and countdowns until the next space launch. You may find it useful, too!

Find the live version here. Read the story behind the current message here.

 

Where does the information come from?

SpaceBoard pulls space-related news headlines from SpaceNews, Breaking Defense, and The New York Times, space legislation updates from Aidy, and launch countdowns from Supercluster. The colored tile in the bottom right-hand corner of the display indicates the source of the current message:

🟥 SpaceNews
🟦 Breaking Defense
⬜ The New York Times
🟧 Aidy
🟨 Supercluster

There are a few colored tiles that haven’t been assigned yet (🟩 and 🟪); if you have any suggestions for how I should expand the board’s functionality to make use of those colors, shoot me a note!

Read more about the story currently being displayed here.

How does it work?

SpaceBoard was developed on Vestaboard’s digital display platform. To get under the hood, check out the public GitHub repository.

The display updates every 15 minutes with new information from one of the five sources. If no new information is available for a particular interval, an older message from the past 12 hours is reposted.

How can I display it myself?

SpaceBoard can be displayed on any web browser. If you’d like to install it as a screensaver on your computer or smart TV, you can make use of some helpful tools designed to display web-based dashboards on those devices, like WebSaver (MacOS), web-page-screensaver (Windows), or Dashboard Screen Saver (Android TV).

A physical SpaceBoard hangs in my office, thanks to a gift from Vestaboard’s Inspire Community program. Come visit Georgia Tech’s campus to take a look!