Orbital Insights

Orbital Insights is my attempt to take something as vast and technical as satellite data and make it understandable, useful, and even personal. I wanted a platform that anyone could use—whether you’re a scientist, a student, or just someone curious about what’s happening to our planet. Orbital Insights lets you actually see change over time and understand why it’s happening. The heart of the platform is a dual-map viewer. You can pick a place and compare two points in time, side by side. Then, with just a click, you can switch layers: natural color to see cities expand or lakes shrink, vegetation health to watch forests recover or disappear, water levels to trace floods and droughts, false-color fire maps to spot burn scars, or even air pollution levels drifting over industrial zones. But what really makes it powerful is that it doesn’t stop at “here’s what changed.” An AI report pulls everything together—imagery, data, history, and even news—and turns it into a story. You get a summary, possible causes, numbers to back it up, and links to sources so you can keep digging. It’s like having a research assistant for the planet. What makes this project even more personal for me is how it was built. I created Orbital Insights on a tiny laptop with only 3GB of RAM. Every crash, every painfully slow build, was a test of patience. But I refused to give up. I’ve been teaching myself everything since finishing high school three years ago in Nigeria, and now living in The Gambia without sponsorship or a path to university. Technology is my lifeline—it’s my only way forward. For me, Orbital Insights is proof that even with limited resources, passion and persistence can build something meaningful. With better tools, I believe I can take it further, polish it, and make it a platform that really helps people understand and respond to the changes happening to our planet. This isn’t just about code—it’s about potential, resilience, and a vision for something bigger than myself.