Lesson 1: Coordinates & Units

Welcome to the Navigation Module! To track the ISS, we need to understand its position in space. The ISS provides its location using Latitude, Longitude, and Altitude.

Session Goals

Retrieve Latitude, Longitude, and Altitude from the ISS.
Understand the difference between Degrees and Radians.
Perform basic unit conversions for navigation math.

The Mission Task

Your first task is to establish a fix on the ISS's location. We will retrieve the raw coordinate data and convert it into a format suitable for complex navigation calculations.

Key Concepts

Latitude & Longitude: Coordinate system used to specify locations on Earth. Latitude is North/South (±90°), Longitude is East/West (±180°).
Radians: A unit of angle measure used in mathematics and physics. A full circle is 2π radians (approx 6.28).
Conversion: rad = deg * (π / 180)
Altitude: The height of the ISS above sea level. The ISS orbits at approximately 400 km.
Unix Timestamp: A way to track time as a running total of seconds. It counts how many seconds have passed since January 1, 1970 (UTC).

Mission Challenge: Orbit Radius

Objective: Calculate the total distance from the Earth's center to the ISS.

Instructions:

Define a variable for the Earth Radius (6371 km).
Retrieve the Altitude from the `position` dictionary.
Calculate the Orbit Radius by adding the Earth Radius and the Altitude.
Print the result in Kilometers.
Convert and print the result in Meters (multiply by 1000).

Orbit (ISS Tracker)

Provides real-time (simulated) coordinate data for the International Space Station.

from astro_pi_orbit import ISS

Usage	Description
iss = ISS()	Initialize the ISS tracker.
iss.get_coordinates()	Returns a dictionary with latitude, longitude, altitude, and timestamp.

Math

Standard Python library for mathematical functions.

import math

Usage	Description
math.pi	The constant Pi (3.14159...)

Datetime

Standard Python library for handling dates and times.

from datetime import datetime

Usage	Description
datetime.fromtimestamp(ts)	Converts a Unix timestamp (seconds) to a readable date object.
dt.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")	Formats a date object as a string (e.g., "2025-12-10 14:30:00").

Mission Control Interface

Output Terminal

Ready to execute...