Plotting global launch sites (Capstone 1 week)

This week is the synthesis of the first three. Coordinate systems are settled (Week 1). Vector vs raster, projections — settled (Week 2). QGIS — settled (Week 3). Now we apply all three to a real space-domain dataset: every active orbital launch pad on Earth.

Defining "active" and "orbital"

The world has dozens of launch sites; most are not active, and many are suborbital-only. For this week's atlas, a launch pad qualifies if it has hosted at least one orbital launch attempt in the past 24 months. That filter leaves roughly 20–25 sites — a number that fits cleanly on a single map and a single dataset.

"Orbital" means the launch was attempting to reach a closed orbit around Earth (LEO and above), not a suborbital trajectory like a sounding rocket or New Shepard. The distinction matters because the launch-pad infrastructure for orbital launches (vertical integration, range safety, downrange recovery) is fundamentally different from suborbital pads.

The attributes that matter

A useful spaceport feature includes:

• name — the canonical name, e.g. "Cape Canaveral Space Force Station"
• cc — ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, e.g. "US"
• operator — the agency or company that runs the pad: NASA, SpaceX, ULA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc.
• vehicles — list of active launch vehicles flown from this pad
• status — "active" / "proposed" / "retired"
• first_orbital_launch — year of first orbital launch from the site
• latest_orbital_launch — year of most recent orbital launch
• lat, lon — coordinates to 4 decimal places minimum (~10 m precision)

Sources you can cite

This is where rigor distinguishes a good atlas from a Wikipedia copy. Cite primary sources:

• The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs publishes the authoritative registry of objects launched into outer space.
• Each launch operator publishes a "press kit" PDF for each launch with the pad ID and exact coordinates.
• The FAA AST (Office of Commercial Space Transportation) publishes the licensed US commercial spaceports.
• LaunchDetect's own spaceport atlas tracks 17 active orbital sites with continuously updated coordinates.

Nearest-neighbor and inclination bands

With the GeoJSON loaded, two analytical questions become natural:

1. Nearest neighbor. For each pad, what is the nearest other orbital pad? Use a geodesic distance (not planar) — pads can be on different continents and the great-circle distance is what matters. shapely's planar distance is wrong here; use geopy.distance.geodesic or PostGIS ST_Distance_Sphere.
2. Inclination band. A pad at latitude φ can launch directly into orbits with inclination ≥ |φ|. So Kourou (5.2° N) can launch equatorial orbits cheaply; Plesetsk (62.9° N) cannot. Group your pads into inclination bands (equatorial, mid-inclination, polar) and visualize.

The capstone

The Week 4 lab is the start of Capstone 1: Global Launch Site Atlas. You'll build the GeoJSON, style and label it in QGIS, and export an A2-sized PDF map. The full rubric is on the capstone page; finishing it earns the Certified Ground Station Operator credential.

A finished atlas is not just a map. It's a citation-grade dataset that any space-domain researcher can use. Coordinate precision must be defensible. Attribute values must be sourced. The visual styling must enable the reader to draw conclusions at a glance: which countries cluster geographically? Which operators have monopoly access to which inclinations? Which sites have surged in activity post-2020?

Track 1 closes here. Going into Track 2 (Orbital Analyst), you'll layer orbital mechanics onto this base. Every TLE you propagate in Track 2 will be referenced back to one of the pads you mapped this week.