CosmicRace 3D

The 3D version of CosmicRace: a Three.js solar system with every planet where it really is today, on its real axis, that you can orbit and fly through.

A frontend app built by Ananda Rizki. More of them at Labs.

COSMICRACE3D

Earth

Planet

MOVE TO TRACK

Fly to

View

Labels L Orbits O Asteroids & Kuiper belt B True scale T

Real sizes and distances. Planets shrink to specks: this is how empty space is.

Play the 2D CosmicRace

Labs — by Ananda Rizki

Simulator

CosmicRace 3D

The 3D version of CosmicRace. Every planet sits where it really is on today's date, placed from NASA JPL orbital elements and checked against JPL Horizons to within a tenth of a degree, and turns on its real axis, so Uranus rolls on its side, Venus spins backwards and Earth's day and night match the clock. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, click a planet to fly to it and ride along its orbit. The Sun is a shader with churning granulation and a corona; Earth has city lights on its night side, sun glint on the oceans, drifting clouds and a thin blue atmosphere; Saturn's rings and the planet cast shadows on each other. Thirteen moons of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune circle their planets where JPL Horizons puts them, Phobos and Deimos as real shape models. Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris follow orbits fitted to JPL Horizons, with Pluto and Charon circling their shared centre of mass and Haumea as its stretched, ringed shape; where no spacecraft has looked, the surface is an artist's impression, labelled as such. Thousands of asteroids orbit on the GPU, with the Kirkwood gaps and Jupiter's Trojans, under a Milky Way set at its real angle. True scale shows how empty space really is, and Race mode brings back the original 2D game: circular tracks, real average speeds, and any planet can be moved onto another's track. Planet maps from NASA missions (SDO, MESSENGER, Cassini, LRO, Voyager, Dawn, New Horizons), Irwin et al. 2024 and Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0), brightness and colour calibrated to measured albedos and spectra.

Built by Ananda Rizki, a software engineer and designer, one of the small web apps he writes for fun at Labs.

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Positions: NASA JPL elements and Horizons · Maps: NASA missions (SDO, MESSENGER, Galileo, Cassini, LRO, Voyager, Dawn, New Horizons), USGS, DLR, Irwin et al. 2024 and Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0)

1 DAY / SECOND

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Getting around

Rotate the viewDrag
Zoom in and outScroll
Fly to a planetClick
Observe up closeV
Fit all planetsF
Show or hide the panelM
Back outEsc

Drag to turn it · Scroll to zoom

COSMICRACE3D

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Open the 2D CosmicRace instead →