Start here.
Welcome. Whether you've never opened a GIS tool or you've been mapping for years, this page is the 30-minute orientation. By the end you'll know exactly what to do next.
You don't need permission to begin. The whole course is free, public, and built for you to learn at your own pace.
No sign-up. No paywall on the curriculum. Click into any week page and the content is right there.
What this course is
LaunchDetect Academy is a free 30-week curriculum in space-domain geographic information systems (GIS) — the discipline of working with maps, satellite imagery, and orbital data. Built by a production space-GIS company (LaunchDetect, which detects rocket launches from satellite thermal imagery). Taught from the ground up: starts at "what is a coordinate system?" and ends at "build a production AWS pipeline that detects events on Earth."
How it works
- 30 weeks, 5 tracks. Each track is 4–10 weeks and ends in a hands-on capstone. Complete the capstone, earn a verifiable certificate (Gold-tier subscription; the curriculum itself is free).
- Each week has the same structure. Opening question → interactive map → primer (~800 words) → "Connecting to Hawaiʻi" sidebar → hands-on lab → quiz → reflection. Same flow every week so you get into a rhythm.
- The labs are real. Each week ships a Jupyter notebook you can open in one click with Google Colab — no install needed. Data is real (NOAA GOES, CelesTrak TLEs, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory). Code runs end-to-end.
- The pedagogy is liberatory. Place-based learning. Hawaiian / Pacific cultural knowledge is treated as part of the curriculum, not a footnote. Each week opens with a question rooted in place; each week closes with a reflection.
Your first hour
- Read the landing page + skim the syllabus — 10 minutes. Get a feel for the whole 30 weeks.
- Open Week 1 — 30 minutes. Read the hook, scroll through the primer, play with the interactive map and the "Try it: how big is one degree?" slider. Don't worry about completing the lab today — just see how a typical week feels.
- Bookmark the glossary — 5 minutes. 44+ terms, including the Hawaiian/Pacific concepts woven through the curriculum (Hōkūleʻa, kuleana, wayfinding, Mauna Kea, indigenous data sovereignty).
- (Optional) Install the academy on your phone — 1 minute. Tap "Add to Home Screen" in your browser's share menu. The academy becomes an app icon you can open instantly.
Built for Hawaiʻi and the Pacific
This curriculum was designed with Hawaiʻi-based youth and Pacific Islander learners in mind. Every week's "Connecting to Hawaiʻi" sidebar grounds the technical concept in local ʻāina (land), institutions, and tradition — wayfinding alongside WGS84, Kīlauea InSAR alongside ground-deformation theory, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center alongside real-time geospatial alerts. The math is universal; the place gives it meaning.
How long does it take?
Each week is roughly 3–6 hours of work. Capstones (one per track, five total) add 8–20 hours each. A motivated full-time learner can complete the whole course in 2–3 months. A part-time learner over a year is more realistic. There's no deadline — pick your own pace.
What if you get stuck?
Three good moves:
- Check the glossary. Many "I don't understand" moments are just unfamiliar vocabulary.
- Reread the primer. The primers are dense — second reading often clicks where first didn't.
- Open an issue at github.com/ops-sketch/academy-labs. Bugs, unclear explanations, anything. The curriculum gets better when readers say what didn't work.