SpaceX Data Exploration (Part 1)
May 2nd, 2020
As I was working on data pulling tutorial, I discovered a fun SpaceX Api. Here is my take on exploring three SpaceX endpoints.
Data from all endoints can be accessed without authorization and with a GET request. I started exploring the info endpoint. It provides some basic information about SpaceX. For instance, it lists Elon Musk as SpaceX founder, CEO and CTO. You can also find when the company was founded, how many employees it has, its valuation (there are a lot of zeros in it) and the company summary. Did you know that SpaceX would like to enable people to live on other planets? I recently read that humans could potentially live on Titan. Not a planet, but perhaps worth considering, Elon?
History endpoint provides some basic inforation on what looks like main events in SpaceX history with event dates varying from 2008 to 2018. I found this link really helpful to plot the chart below.
We can also look at landing pads endpoint. There are only 7 of them but some of them have odd names ("Of Course I still Love you" in Port Canaveral and "Just Read the Instructions" in Port of Los Angeles). 5 of the landing pads are in Florida (Cape and Port Canaveral) and 2 are in California (Vandenberg Air Force Base and Port of Los Angeles). I used Folium to plot a map with all landing pads which is not super exciting landing pads map. The endpoint also provides attempted and successful attempts for each landing pad.
In the consequent post, I'll look at other endpoints some of which contain a lot more information. Full code for this post can be found here.