🌍 Python NASA ISS Tracker

Watch the International Space Station fly across the Earth in real-time
Built with pure Python using Turtle graphics + NASA data.

✨ Features

• Live ISS Tracking – Updates every 5 seconds
• Beautiful World Map Background – Realistic Earth view
• Interactive Turtle Graphics – ISS icon moves smoothly across the globe
• Real NASA Data – Powered by the official Open Notify API (api.open-notify.org)
• Zero external dependencies – Uses only Python standard library
• Educational & Fun – Perfect for learning APIs, JSON, and graphics

🖼️ Preview

The ISS icon (yellow/orange) moves across the world map in real-time.

🚀 How It Works

1. The program opens a full-screen Turtle window with a world map.
2. It continuously calls the NASA-backed Open Notify API to get the current latitude & longitude of the ISS.
3. The ISS icon is moved to the new coordinates on the map.
4. Repeats every 5 seconds.

📥 Installation & Usage

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/alisulmanpro/Python-Nasa-Project.git
cd Python-Nasa-Project

2. Run the tracker

python main.py

That's it! No installation of extra packages required.

Note: Make sure both world-map.gif and iss-icon.gif are in the same folder as main.py.

🛠️ Technologies Used

• Python 3
• turtle – Graphics
• urllib.request – API calls
• json – Data parsing
• time – Refresh interval

📡 API Source

Data is fetched from:
http://api.open-notify.org/iss-now.json (Public NASA/Open Notify API)

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:

• Add more NASA features (Astronauts in space, Meteor showers, etc.)
• Improve the map or add night/day mode
• Create a GUI version with Tkinter or Pygame

Just open a Pull Request!

📜 License

This project is open-source and available under the MIT License.

Made with ❤️ by Ali Sulman
Exploring space one line of Python at a time! 🚀