Build an ISS Location Tracker

Level: Beginner

Nov 24, 2025

Your task for today is to create a script that tracks the real-time location of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting 400 kilometers above Earth! You’ll connect to a live NASA API that provides up-to-the-second coordinates of where astronauts are right now in space. This is your first step into the world of API integration — learning how to pull live data from external services and use it in your Python programs.

Project Task

Create an ISS location tracker that:

Uses the requests library to fetch data from an API: http://api.open-notify.org/iss-now.json
Connects to the Open Notify API to get ISS coordinates
Retrieves the current latitude and longitude of the ISS
Parses JSON data to extract location information
Displays the ISS position in a readable format
Shows real-time space station coordinates

This project gives you hands-on practice with API requests, JSON parsing, and working with real-time data — essential skills for building applications that interact with external services.

Expected Output

ISS Location Tracker
====================

Fetching current ISS location...

International Space Station Position:
--------------------------------------
ISS Latitude: -23.4567
ISS Longitude: 142.8901

Location retrieved successfully!

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Skeleton and Solution

Below you will find both a downloadable skeleton.py file to help you code the project with comment guides and the downloadable solution.py file containing the correct solution.

Get the code skeleton here:

Skeleton

Get the code solution here:

Solution