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.
8 lessons
- Upper secondary and early undergraduate (ages 15+) · 50 min
Why Low Orbits Decay
Atmospheric drag never stops acting in low Earth orbit. Students read the drag term and perigee from real records, rank objects by how fast they will come down, and learn why the answer is a band rather than a date.
dragdecayreentrybstarspace-weatherperigee - Upper secondary and early undergraduate (ages 14+) · 45 min
Read a Ground Track
A ground track is the orbit drawn on a turning Earth. Compute how far west the next pass lands using nothing but the orbital period, and find out why the inclination sets how far north the track reaches.
ground-trackinclinationperiodsidereal-daycoverage - 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 - Beginner amateur radio and upper secondary physics · 50 min
Doppler Shift on a Satellite Pass
A satellite moving at kilometres per second drags its own signal in frequency. Work out the size of the shift yourself, plan a receive-only session around it, and never transmit as part of this activity.
doppleramateur-radiopassesreceivingfrequencysafety - Introductory programming, data engineering, or A-level computing · 55 min
When a Catalog Number Outgrows Its Format
The Two-Line Element format reserves exactly five characters for the catalog number. The catalog passed 99,999. This lesson makes that abstract lesson about fixed-width fields concrete, with an endpoint that really does return an error.
data-formatstleommidentifiersapilegacy-systemserror-handling - Early undergraduate aerospace · 50 min
Read Current Orbital Elements
Compare current orbital values across two records and explain why the epoch matters before using elements in an analysis.
tleepochinclinationmean-motionorbital-elements - Secondary school and early undergraduate (ages 14+) · 45 min
Understanding NORAD and COSPAR Identifiers
Every tracked object carries two names: a NORAD catalog number and a COSPAR International Designator. This lesson teaches students to read both, and to see why one encodes a launch and the other does not.
identifierscatalogsnoradcosparmetadata
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.
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Use versioned dataset releases for reproducible coursework.
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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.