The International Space Station orbits the Earth at 28,000 km/h, fast enough to make it from our planet to the moon and back in a day.
The 1 million pound craft carries its six passengers around the circumference of the Earth every 90 minutes at that speed.
And now, thanks to Open Notify‘s API and coder Sten Hougaard, a senior front end developer who blogs at Netsi.dk, we can map it’s course in real time.
“I love to demonstrate how to use these features,” Hougaard told us about his use of Open Notify. The open source project was created by Nathan Bergey to provide “a simple programming interface for some of NASA’s awesomest data.”
“[Open Notify] is good sneak preview of what’s to come in the future web,” Hougaard told us. “I expect the APIs and a ‘data layer based’ web will be a big bright future for all of us, the users of the web.”
Related: Watch ISS’s live cameras focused on the Earth, 24 hours a day
By Andy Stern
Here is the current position of ISS on a Google Map, travelling fast enough that you can actually watch the craft’s marker accumulate a trail. (Scroll up or down atop the map to zoom in or out.)
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