Teach and learn with a live satellite catalog
Lessons, datasets, and research methods built on OrbitalWiki's real, source-backed catalog. Pick a path below, search the lessons, or start with a student project.
Start with the learner
Choose the closest teaching context. You can refine the lesson list afterwards.
Secondary school
Ages 11–18. Short, self-contained activities using real satellite records.
Undergraduate aerospace
Orbit regimes, catalogs, and the identifiers that tie datasets together.
Data science
Joining, cleaning, and reasoning about a real, imperfect public catalog.
Computer science
Working with a public REST API, keys, and structured provenance data.
Amateur radio
Finding spacecraft, receiving responsibly, and planning passes from current orbital elements.
Research methods
Provenance, conflicting sources, and citing an evolving dataset honestly.
Choose a lesson
Filter by learner group, then narrow by topic, level, or time. Every card opens the full lesson.
5 lessons
- Early undergraduate aerospace and remote sensing · 55 min
Sun-Synchronous Orbits and the Overpass Time
Earth’s equatorial bulge turns an orbit plane. Choose the inclination so that it turns at exactly one revolution per year and the satellite crosses the equator at the same local solar time forever. Students verify the signature on real records.
sun-synchronousinclinationprecessionremote-sensinglocal-solar-time - Early undergraduate and senior secondary · 55 min
The Geostationary Belt Is a Finite Address Space
Geostationary orbit is a single circle at a fixed radius, so a satellite’s address is one number: its longitude. Students compute how much room a station-keeping box really is, then discover that not everything labelled GEO is holding still.
geostationaryorbital-slotsitustation-keepingcatalog-literacy - Introductory data science and research methods · 60 min
Match Records Across Two Catalogs
Joining by name looks easy and fails quietly. Joining by identifier works until you ask who issued the identifier and what they meant by it. Students build a match table with an explicit confidence for every row.
entity-resolutionjoinsidentifiersprovenancedata-quality - Senior secondary and undergraduate research methods · 50 min
How Many Satellites Are There?
Every published satellite count answers a slightly different question. Rather than looking up "the" number, students collect several, work out which question each one answers, and produce a claim that survives being checked.
definitionscountingprovenancecitationdynamic-datamedia-literacy - Research methods, senior secondary and undergraduate · 50 min
Evaluate a Catalog Claim
Turn one catalog field into a defensible, limited claim by recording the record, provenance, access time, and any uncertainty instead of copying a value without context.
provenancecitationconfidencedynamic-data
Educator resources
Notebooks
Jupyter notebooks that run against the live OrbitalWiki API. Every request in them is real and was executed before publication. Download one, open it in Jupyter, run it top to bottom.
All notebooksDataset downloads
Use versioned dataset releases for reproducible coursework.
Browse datasetsCitation guide
Use the site guide to cite records and dataset releases accurately.
Open citation guideRequest a lesson language
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Request a languageInstructor packs
The Satellite Science Unit Pack collects all 17 lessons into one printable document, with every worksheet, answer key and figure included, under a licence that covers a single classroom or family. Every lesson stays free to read and download on its own.
Student project ideas
Identifier detective
Pick ten satellites, record both identifiers from their record pages, and explain what each identifier does and does not tell you. Builds directly on the identifiers lesson.
Orbit-regime census
Use the catalog's orbit-class data to count how many active objects sit in LEO, MEO, GEO and HEO, and write up what the distribution implies about how space is used today.
Provenance audit
Find a satellite whose record shows conflicting or unverified fields, then trace each claim to its source and confidence. A concrete introduction to data provenance.