Articles by Antonio Hidalgo Galindo

In the previous entry, I said that we had found a new database, and we would have to take a closer look to it.

Actually, what I found was a JPL public FTP, with lots of data in it (I have barely taken a glance to all the folders that contains, so have fun looking into it :P).

In that FTP, inside ssd folder (Solar System Dynamics, not Solid State Drive), there were several different files, some of them with .DB extension, some of them with .dat extension, and a README.

The README explained some of the files (a few of them are still a mystery), and I quote what it said about a file named dastcom5.zip.

dastcom5.zip

Link to a a portable/programmable version of the JPL/Horizons database of asteroids and comets ("DASTCOM5"), updated as often …

In the previous entry, several different APIs related to NEOs were studied, and finally NeoWs was chosen to start working with.

This week, we aimed to start with coding itself, adding an orbit_from_spk_id function to newly created poliastro.neos module.

In order to achieve this, the first step was researching how NeoWs API exactly works.

NeoWs operation

As stated in the prevoius article of this "series", this API provides several different functionalities, but, for the moment, we were only interested in the lookup service.

It also counts with web documentation, which was a really good start point, as you can see:

When using the lookup service (and any NASA API) you need an API key, but we used DEMO_KEY, which only limits your queries to 40 per hour. Having that in mind, all you need to do is a query …

After setting up the blog, it was time to start with the first week of my timeline. The task for this week was to research the available NASA Open APIs and other NEOs databases that could better fit for this project.

I had already studied some APIs, and taked a look at their capabilities, but further research was needed. As my proposal was made of 3 different pages, I analyzed each one separately.

CNEOS page

In the CNEOS page there is a list of tools, but it can be shorten to four different APIs/Databases:

• JPL Small-Body Database Browser: allows to search any small-body (like NEOs) by entering the IAU number, name, or designation, and also supports wild-cards * and/or ?. Available data include, quoting the page itself:

  • orbital elements
  • orbit diagrams
  • physical parameters
  • discovery circumstances

  Newly discovered objects and their …

After several weeks thinking that SOCIS would not launch this year, finally the long-awaited email arrived! I am really happy for being selected by poliastro and my mentor @astrojuanlu, with the aim of creating an API, relying on NASA Open APIs, in order to provide small-bodies orbital data (my proposal can be seen here).

Our plan is to write a weekly blog entry, stating and documenting what have been done during that period. I think these posts will be a great way of reviewing what have been accomplished, and I also hope they will be interesting enough to anyone interested in Python, science, NEOs, or just reading random internet blogs.

This has been the first one of eight weeks (yeah, that’s not what my proposal timeline says, but it’s all we have 😊), and, surprisingly, the first task I …