Changelog.

Live log of curriculum updates, new features, and content corrections. Add this page to your bookmarks if you're a returning learner — easier than re-scanning every week.

2026-05-13

Curriculum rewrites — geodesy placement, real-time backends, production patterns

• W3 (QGIS hands-on) now includes a Quick Geodesy Primer (ellipsoid vs geoid, EGM2008, the three heights). Previously, learners didn't see ellipsoid/geoid foundations until W24 — too late for W15 (parallax) to lean on. Now Track 1 carries the foundation; W15 and W24 build on it.
• W19 (Real-time GIS) upgraded from "WebSocket streaming with an in-process generator" to "PostGIS LISTEN/NOTIFY → WebSocket fan-out" — the actual production pattern. Adds the upstream piece: a detection pipeline writes to PostgreSQL, the database broadcasts via pg_notify, the WebSocket server fans the event out. Includes replay-then-live resume semantics for reconnect. Now uses FastAPI's modern lifespan context manager instead of the deprecated @app.on_event.
• W24 (Geodesy) reframed from intro to production. Now covers PROJ pipelines (multi-step composition grammar), NTv2 / NADCON grid-shift files with the right per-country labels, time-dependent ITRF reference frames (ITRF2008/2014/2020 with epoch annotation), and datum-conflict detection in multi-source pipelines.
• W27 (Production pipelines) CDK example now uses the canonical CDK v2 pattern: scope: Construct from the constructs package (not v1-style scope: cdk.App), explicit EventType import. The example now compiles and supports nested-stack reuse.
• W29 (Geospatial APIs) expanded from 412 to 685 prose words. New sections on auth + rate limits, CORS + response design, OGC API — Features standard, versioning, and an ethics callback to W28.

Ethics framing threaded earlier

• W1 lede now opens the dual-use thread: "a coordinate is also a choice."
• W14 (thermal plume detection) gains a "Before you ship this" callout pointing to W28 — at the exact moment a learner is about to build a working plume detector.
• W28 (Privacy + ethics) lede acknowledges the earlier touchpoints, so the systematic treatment reads as "what we've been pulling at all along" rather than first contact.

Data-source guidance added

• W7 — Space-Track.org vs CelesTrak (rate limits, account flow, when to use which), N2YO / SatNOGS / Jonathan McDowell's catalog as alternatives.
• W12 — Microsoft Planetary Computer, AWS Open Data (sentinel-cogs + usgs-landsat), USGS EarthExplorer, Copernicus Data Space.
• W13 — NOAA AWS Open Data bucket structure, Google Cloud mirror, NOAA CLASS historical archive, Himawari-9 forward reference.

Accessibility

• WCAG 2.4.1 main landmark + skip-link added to all 30 week pages + 11 aux pages (syllabus, 5 tracks, 5 capstones, /verify/). Every academy page now has a proper bypass-blocks landmark for screen readers.
• 3 interactive SVG charts (W2 Mercator distortion, W14 Planck curve, W23 InSAR fringe pattern) got role="img" + descriptive aria-label.

Content accuracy

• W3 geoid undulation sign corrected: Hawaiʻi sits +10–15 m above the WGS84 ellipsoid (not below); Iceland is also positive (~+65 m), not flipped sign. Magnitude of the SRTM/GPS discrepancy example corrected from 50 m to 20 m to match Hawaiʻi reality.
• W19 PTWC location corrected: PTWC HQ moved from ʻEwa Beach to the NOAA Inouye Regional Center on Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, in 2014. Map marker, caption, and Hawaiian-connection text all updated.
• W24 GEOID18 specification corrected: GEOID18 is a model (distributed as the us_noaa_g2018u0.tif PROJ grid), not a CRS — earlier copy implied EPSG:6360, which is something different.
• W15 GOES-R documentation link replaced (the old ATBD PDF URL had 404'd; now points at the live goes-r.gov/resources/docs.html index).
• Missing "wayfinding" glossary links on W18 and W25 added.

SEO + performance

• Article JSON-LD on all 30 weeks now carries mainEntityOfPage and a topical keywords array (Google Rich Result eligibility).
• Preconnect hints on all 30 weeks for the Leaflet CDN and OpenStreetMap tile host — saves ~50–100 ms of first-paint LCP on cold loads.
• Sitemap (landing + STM) bumped lastmod dates for the 36 academy URLs actually changed today; the other 16 retain their original dates so re-crawl signal stays honest.
• Next-track ladder links added to the four non-terminal track pages (GSO → OA → RSS → MGE).
• Capstone pages now link back to the specific week where the capstone lab work begins (was a navigation hole).

Open-curriculum guardrails

• LaunchDetect-specific operational details removed from W14 / W22 / W27 — discriminator features (spaceport geofence + temporal pattern), internal classifier naming, named-Lambda flow, and the production target on false-positive rate. The pedagogical content stays; the recipe doesn't. Generic equivalents (NOAA HMS, NASA FIRMS, JMA cited as peers) replaced the LaunchDetect-uniqueness framing.

2026-05-12

QA pass — maps, social previews, sitemap

• Interactive maps on all 30 weeks now auto-frame their markers and stay put when you click them (previously, narrow viewports cropped the islands and clicking a marker panned the map off-target).
• Antimeridian-crossing maps (W10 global launch sites, W21 GOES/Himawari coverage) now render with a contiguous Pacific-centric view so every pin is visible.
• Social-share previews on each week now use that week's track-branded image (Ground Station Operator, Orbital Analyst, Remote Sensing Specialist, Mission GIS Engineer, Space GIS Architect) — previously all 30 weeks shared one generic preview.
• The academy is now in the site sitemap (52 URLs added — weeks, tracks, capstones, glossary, syllabus, teacher-guide, changelog). Faster discovery by search engines.
• Coordinate corrections on Hawaiian islands across W1, W2, W3, W4, W6, W17, W27 (precise Wikipedia/USGS values instead of approximate ones — one marker on W6 was previously placed in the ocean off Oʻahu).
• Heading hierarchy on /academy/ landing fixed; missing ʻokina in W10 quiz and W13 prose corrected.

2026-05-11

Liberatory pedagogy + Hawaiʻi-rooted positioning

• Every week now opens with a place-based hook question, includes a "Connecting to Hawaiʻi" sidebar, and closes with a reflection question.
• 5 cert tracks and 5 capstones now have track-level / capstone-level Hawaiian framing.
• 3 canonical answer pages (/what-is-space-gis/, /learn-gis-online/, /how-to-detect-rocket-launches/) now close with a "From Hawaiʻi" block.
• 9 Hawaiian/Pacific terms added to the glossary (ʻāina, ahupuaʻa, kuleana, wayfinding, Hōkūleʻa, mauka/makai, Mauna Kea, Kīlauea, indigenous data sovereignty). Auto-link to glossary anchors from anywhere they appear.
• New deep-dive essay: Pacific wayfinding and space GIS.
• New teacher's guide: How to use the curriculum in your classroom, free for educational use.

Interactive widgets — 13 weeks now have them

• W1 — Latitude → km of longitude slider
• W2 — Mercator distortion visualizer (SVG)
• W4 — Design a launch site (latitude → inclination + nearest spaceport)
• W7 — TLE parser (paste, see 6 Keplerian elements)
• W8 — Propagate the ISS forward in time
• W9 — Visibility threshold sandbox
• W11 — Walk-the-EM-spectrum slider
• W14 — Brightness temp + inline Planck-curve chart (SVG)
• W18 — Orbit speed visualizer (Kepler's 3rd law)
• W21 — Multi-satellite coverage finder
• W22 — ML confidence threshold sandbox
• W23 — InSAR fringe reader (live SVG interferogram)
• W24 — GPS-vs-sea-level height calculator

Visual design rebrand

• Switched from dark space-tech palette (#0a0e14) to warm Hawaiian-tropical (#fdf8ee + Pacific teal + hibiscus coral + sun gold + forest green + lehua red)
• 5 unique per-track hero SVGs (globe, orbital ellipse, EM spectrum, vector-tile grid, pipeline diagram)
• Larger type, more breathing room, mobile-responsive at 640px and 380px breakpoints

Engagement / progress

• localStorage-based progress tracking. Visiting a week page silently records the visit. No account, no cookie tracking.
• "Welcome back" resume CTA on landing (suggests next unvisited week)
• Per-track progress bar on each cert track page
• Visit-completion dots on syllabus
• Per-week reading-time estimate
• Per-week share row: Twitter/X + copy link + GitHub Discussion + Print/PDF

AI SEO instrumentation

• 178+ JSON-LD blocks across 50 pages, all validated against Schema.org
• Schema types: Course, LearningResource, Article, Quiz, HowTo, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, DefinedTermSet, WebSite+SearchAction, EducationalOccupationalCredential, EducationalOccupationalProgram, Dataset, Organization+subOrganization
• 235 KB single-file LLM corpus at /academy/llms-full.txt
• robots.txt explicitly welcomes 14 AI/LLM crawlers
• IndexNow ping covers all 50+ URLs on every deploy
• Open Graph image + Twitter cards on every page
• PWA installable (manifest.json + icon)

Companion repo

• 35 Jupyter notebooks live at github.com/ops-sketch/academy-labs with leafmap-first working starter code
• One-click Colab links for every notebook — all return HTTP 200
• GitHub Discussions enabled — per-week discussion threads

What's next (roadmap)

Items being considered, in roughly priority order:

• Per-week unique OG images (currently a single shared image)
• More try-it widgets for weeks that don't yet have one (17 of 30 still need one)
• A 3D Cesium embed for Week 18 (currently text-only)
• Cert backend (Lambda + DDB + PDF + verifiable cert URLs) — currently the verify page is a placeholder; the curriculum is fully usable without it
• A "remix" guide for educators who want to fork the curriculum to their local context

If there's something you want sooner, open an issue at github.com/ops-sketch/academy-labs/issues.