Ground Station Operator

Foundations of geographic information systems applied to space. By the end you can load, project, and visualize coordinate data, plot every active orbital launch pad on Earth, and reason about coordinate systems and datums without confusion. The capstone delivers a styled global launch-site atlas.

What you'll learn

• Explain the difference between geographic (lat/lon) and projected coordinate systems, and choose the right one for a task.
• Identify the correct datum (WGS84 vs alternatives) for satellite-derived data.
• Load vector and raster GIS data into QGIS, style it, and export a publication-grade map.
• Plot global launch sites and compute basic spatial relationships (distance, nearest neighbor).

Prerequisites

None. Comfortable with basic computing (open files, install software). Some Python helpful but not required.

Tools you'll use

QGIS 3.x · Python 3.11+ · geopandas · shapely · pyproj

Weekly curriculum (4 weeks)

• Week 1 What is GIS? Coordinate systems and datums
• Week 2 Vector vs raster, and map projections
• Week 3 QGIS hands-on: load, style, export
• Week 4 Plotting global launch sites (Capstone 1 week) Capstone 1

Capstone 1: Global Launch Site Atlas

Map every active orbital launch pad on Earth.

Build a GeoJSON FeatureCollection of all currently-active orbital launch pads worldwide (~20 sites). Each feature has properties: name, country (ISO 3166), operator, status (active/proposed/retired), vehicles flown, first orbital launch year, latest orbital launch year, latitude, longitude. Style the layer in QGIS by operator and country. Compose a publication-quality print layout: title, legend, scale bar, north arrow, attribution. Export the final map as a PDF at A2 size.