John

Posted on Apr 11

From NASA Exoplanet Query to ExoVault: Building a Better Data Exploration Experience

#opensource #webdev #astro #typescript

Other project idea I recently decided to build in public was inspired by the NASA Exoplanet Query prompt from the App Ideas repository.

That project eventually became ExoVault:
https://github.com/johnnylemonny/ExoVault

What started as a structured data query idea turned into something much more interesting for me:
a more polished, cinematic interface for exploring NASA exoplanet archive data.

The original prompt

The NASA Exoplanet Query idea is already a really good challenge.

It’s built around:

working with NASA archive data,
loading CSV efficiently,
minimizing delays at startup,
and building a query interface that lets users filter exoplanet data by fields like discovery year, method, host name, and facility.

That made it appealing right away.

It wasn’t just about rendering data.
It was about thinking carefully about:

ingestion,
structure,
search,
and presentation.

What pulled me into this idea

What interested me most wasn’t only the dataset.

It was the possibility of taking something that could have been “just a query tool” and pushing it toward a better exploration experience.

I kept thinking:

What if this felt less like a utility screen and more like a discovery product?

That question shaped the direction of the whole project.

Instead of building only the minimum query UI, I wanted to create something that felt more deliberate, more visually refined, and more enjoyable to explore.

That’s where ExoVault came from.

How ExoVault evolved

In my version, the project became a more premium archive explorer built around:

a custom CSV-to-JSON data pipeline,
a high-performance frontend,
compare mode for exoplanetary systems,
glassmorphic visuals,
and a more cinematic browsing experience.

I built ExoVault with:

Astro
React
Tailwind CSS
TypeScript

and used a custom data pipeline to process NASA’s raw CSV into optimized JSON payloads.

That part was especially satisfying because it made the project feel more complete end-to-end:
not just UI, not just data handling, but both working together.

What I wanted the project to feel like

One of my goals with ExoVault was to make exploration feel intentional.

Not just:

filter,
search,
render rows,
done.

I wanted the archive to feel like something people would actually want to browse.

That meant paying attention to things like:

visual hierarchy,
transitions,
compare flow,
and how the interface frames the data.

I think there’s a big difference between “showing information” and “creating a discovery experience.”

This project made me think a lot about that difference.

What I learned while building it

A few things stood out while working on ExoVault:

1. Data projects become more interesting when presentation is treated seriously

A structured dataset can feel dry or compelling depending on how the experience is shaped.

2. Prompt-based ideas are often stronger than they first appear

The original App Ideas brief gave me a very solid technical core.
The interesting part came from deciding how to evolve it.

3. Frontend polish matters even in data-heavy apps

If the interface feels flat, the whole experience feels flatter too.
Good data presentation is also a UX problem.

4. Public repos push me toward stronger execution

Knowing the project would live openly on GitHub made me care more about the quality of the pipeline, repo structure, documentation, and overall presentation.

Why I like using structured prompts as a starting point

I think structured prompt repositories are one of the best ways to build momentum — especially if you don’t treat them as the finish line.

That’s how I’m trying to use them.

Not as instructions to copy,
but as a framework to build from.

The prompt gives me:

direction,
constraints,
and technical focus.

Then the real project begins when I start asking:

how should this feel?
what should be improved?
what makes this worth sharing publicly?
how can this become more than the base brief?

ExoVault is probably one of my clearest examples of that so far.

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