Ideas for Expansion

[jakewmeyer]

Please feel free to post any suggestions, corrections, or additions I should make to the data. I'll try my best to keep it as current as possible 👍

Thanks!

[quadrplax]

https://api.spacexdata.com/upcoming
Info for next three or so launches which have solid-ish NET dates.

[jakewmeyer]

Planning on adding tentative future launch data next.

Thanks for the feedback!

[petrosh]

Patches!!

[jakewmeyer]

Agreed on the patches 200% 👍

Links to the original photos?

[jakewmeyer]

Patch links are now live! 👍

[jakewmeyer]

@quadrplax I've added an endpoint for upcoming launches, I'll keep adding to it as we find out information.

https://api.spacexdata.com/launches/upcoming

[jokecamp]

It would be great to make links an array in a hypermedia inspired way. That way you could link a lot of different links like SpaceX instagram posts, gifs, videos, articles,

Something like

links: [ { type: 'video', url: '' }, { type: 'instagram', url: '' }, ]

[jakewmeyer]

@jokecamp Looking at a better way to express the data, so it allows for more flexibility going forward.

[HarvsG]

Not exactly sure of the usefulness, but perhaps links to Reddit launch threads and/or media threads? Perhaps as part of @jokecamp's suggestion for a 'links' object

[jakewmeyer]

@HarvsG I'll add it to the list for the links object

[jakewmeyer]

@jokecamp @HarvsG Now that I have a good way to add multiple links, I'll make a pass and add the reddit launch threads

Anything else media related that should be included?

[jakewmeyer]

Launches + Upcoming Launches now have links to reddit campaign, launch, recovery, and media threads, as well as official presskit PDF's put out by SpaceX 👍

[kfarr]

This is a great data source, thanks for creating this! Curious if there is source for add'l info on the launches -- specifically looking for detailed info to create a 3d visualization of the launches.

[jakewmeyer]

@kfarr What kind of additional info?

[kfarr]

So the crazy idea is to make a visualization of the earth and the orbit in webvr. This would require at a minimum:

• Launch site geo position (available now)
• Landing site geo position (for 1 or more components)
• Flight path - even a basic approximation

I don't know the right way to suggest providing this data but I think there would be interest in such a visualization and I'm happy to take a stab at it.

I suppose the "pareto superior" next step is to provide a landing position in addition to launch site in the data?

[jakewmeyer]

Awesome! I've been wanting to include more detailed telemetry, but haven't had a good way to make it happen easily until now. If we can nail down some specific info that we need, I can add a telemetry section to the flights for easier visualization and analysis.

The idea almost sounds like a VR version of Flight Club from @murphd37, which has super detailed trajectory and data simulations for lots of flights. He would be a good resource for information about the best way to go about it.

[kfarr]

Wow Flight Club is incredible, looks like @murphd37 has done the heavy lifting already on the visualization side. So, the missing element is simply linking these together? For example, here's the link to the "playback" view of Bulgaria Sat 1: https://www.flightclub.io/world/?w=2&code=BGS1

It could be yet another item in the link array, assuming that there is interest in visualizing these things ahead of the mission launch. I also don't know what info is released publicly prior to launch

[jakewmeyer]

I'll make a pass on the database and add the links for the launches @murphd37 added previously 👍

[waterskier2007]

Here's an idea for the rocket associated to each launch

Similar to how the launches have the launch site as:

"launch_site": {
"site_id": "kwajalein_atoll",
"site_name": "Kwajalein Atoll"
}

You could have the rocket for each launch like:

"rocket": {
"rocket_id": "falcon9",
"rocket_name": "Falcon 9"
}

This would allow lookups of rockets from the launch data

[waterskier2007]

@jakewmeyer thoughts?

[jakewmeyer]

@waterskier2007 I'll add it to the list, hoping to add this and #31 today/tonight

[waterskier2007]

👌you da man

[waterskier2007]

@jakewmeyer I see some of the launches are beginning to take the structure. I assume your plan is to do this for all launches?

[waterskier2007]

@jakewmeyer also, just an FYI, the launches/cores/coreId and launches/caps/capId endpoints will have to be updated because the core_serial and cap_serial are no longer properties of the launches directly

[jakewmeyer]

@chrislongden

I'll look into adding that as another check. The wiki is awesome for longer term dates, but once you get to the day of, it's usually not updated as much, since most updates come in through the launch threads. Problem with those is the info is inconsistently inconsistent, which makes it harder to scrape.

Ideally I'd like to cut off the wiki time updates 24 hours out, and switch over to something that is updated more frequently, like the sidebar or launch thread.

[jeroenboumans]

@jakewmeyer Just thinking out loud: would it be possible to filter @spacex's tweets (example) for that? #224

[jakewmeyer]

@jeroenboumans Maybe. Seriously considering something like that for the static fire announcements, since the format is pretty consistent.

[robinschmied]

Hi @jakewmeyer. Would it be possible to add the "site_name": "CCAFS SLC 40" property from the launches endpoint to the the launchpad endpoint. Currently, there is just site_id and site_name_long, but no site_name.

[jakewmeyer]

@robinschmied Added 👍

[timisenman]

It would be great to have a manifest for SpaceX tests as well, like Starhopper, and Starship, with their associated times, details, etc.

[timisenman]

One thing I've done with my own parsing of the API is extract subtitles from the launches, to allow for more nuanced use of the titles in my app.

It would be nice to have this done by the API, so other consumers could make use of the cleaner titles as well.

Example: Smallsat SSO Rideshare 2 Mission 9
If the title has "Mission" or "()" in it, I will take the substring starting after "Mission" to make...

Title: Smallsat SSO Rideshare 2 
Subtitle: Mission 9

Which I then use for cleaner headers.

[antoinegag]

Would it be out of scope to provide Starlink data? I think it could make for interesting uses.

[jakewmeyer]

@antoinegag What starlink data are you thinking of?

[antoinegag]

@jakewmeyer I'm not too knowledgeable about what data is currently publicly available on starlink but things like numbers of sats out there, data about their positions, their operational state etc.

[marcozambi]

Just a question: is the timeline info not provided anymore? It's been a few launches without any of that...

[jakewmeyer]

@antoinegag Bare minimum we have all the NORAD id's for each starlink sat, so theoretically we could have a list of all the satellites, with current orbit info, updated hourly. That seems to be the most useful info surrounding them, and more info could be added as satellites are added or decommissioned.

[jakewmeyer]

@marcozambi It's something I've been neglecting to do. It's one of the few things not automated, so it requires parsing the press release, converting all the times, and making sure it falls in line with previous ones.

The current format isn't great, and I don't think I'll support it going forward without automating it.

I know one of the more useful pieces of data from it is the webcast liftoff timestamp, so I'd be willing to add a property for that, similar to the youtube_id property.

[jesusrp98]

PDF parsing is not automatic? I think there are a couple of services that would be helpful in order to extract timeline info from the press kit SpaceX provides.

[AlbericTrancart]

Hello @jakewmeyer !
I second the idea of having data about Starlink sats. For instance with it we could do stats about in orbit/decayed sats over time.

All the data seems to be here: https://celestrak.com/pub/satcat.txt
I can't use this resource in SpaceX Stats because it's over 6MB and the CORS policy forbids it, but I'll happily write an update script and submit a PR if you want.

I know that you are focused on v4 right now but after that it could be a great addition 👍
The real issue will be to find a format and/or filtering that can handle 12k sats hehe... like a per sat endpoint and a "constellation" endpoint that aggregates the thing

[jakewmeyer]

Agreed, this would be cool to have 👍 After v4 I'll take a closer look

[SturdyPose]

Is it possible to add an image URL to each rocket? Will it create a hassle to sustain them?

[jesusrp98]

@Poselsky each rocket has an array with multiple photos. This feature is also available to ships and capsules.

[stanifert]

Something I am exploring now is providing updates about upcoming launches. I am most likely just going to pull in tweets from SpaceX, Elon, and other Twitter accounts for now, but something from the API would be great. It would be useful to see a history of changes to the launch and some info of why it was postponed/scrubbed.

An array of little snippets like "Launch moved to xDate" or "Launch scrubbed today due to weather, next attempt xDate" would be great. Could be added to the /launches/next response, containing a string and a timestamp.

[jakewmeyer]

I always recommend looking at the official SpaceX twitter for these kind of updates, mostly due to the time sensitive nature of it.

Happy to add a solution to this, but just know there's an inherent delay, since the updates usually appear on twitter or the subreddit first, then someone has to go update the API.

It could be automated if a more structured source was available, but as it stands, it would require human intervention.

[persello]

Hello @jakewmeyer, since we have already seen two crewed missions, I think it would be useful to take into account the fact that a mission can be split into multiple webcasts (launch, coast, approach, docking, departure, splashdown, ...).

In my client I tried to discover all the webcast links by looking at the YouTube description of the "main" webcast, searching for the link of the next one, but it's not very elegant and subject to change based on how SpaceX manages their videos. Also, it's impossible to discover the reentry webcasts starting from the main one.

I have no idea on how you build an API like this one, as I'm only able to fetch data from it, but I think that changing the YouTube ID property into an array would break all the apps that use this API version, so I imagine that it should be implemented in another way.

Is it possible to add such information to this API? Thank you.

[PatrykWojcieszak]

Hello @jakewmeyer since SpaceX has started Starship test flights, is there a possibility add an endpoint for test flights? It would provide information such as: name, serial number, test purpose, etc.

[ChopsKingsland]

Put experimental Starship launches under upcoming launches