Our Data: The ISS' Location

In life, and in the universe, it's always best to keep looking up.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

In this section, we're going to look up object properties in all sorts of ways, and what better data could we ask for than data for something that is orbiting our world?

The Awesome JSON Datasets repository has a NASA section that links to Open Notify's ISS Now and How Many People Are In Space Right Now? endpoints.

Here is an example response that shares where on Earth the International Space Station is right now:

{
  "message": "success",
  "timestamp": 1617930803,
  "iss_position": {
    "latitude": "27.7270",
    "longitude": "133.2581"
  }
}

And here is an example of "How Many People Are In Space Right Now?" as of 2021-04-08:

{
  "message": "success",
  "number": 7,
  "people": [
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Sergey Ryzhikov"
    },
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Kate Rubins"
    },
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Sergey Kud-Sverchkov"
    },
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Mike Hopkins"
    },
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Victor Glover"
    },
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Shannon Walker"
    },
    {
      "craft": "ISS",
      "name": "Soichi Noguchi"
    }
  ]
}

We'll use these simple datasets to show off a number of very helpful Ramda functions that deal with looking up object properties.