Spacex-api: Telemetry Correlation

[spacexdash]

Hi -

I see from this issue #352 that there was a suggestion to use launch dashboard api for first stage telemetry which is a great API - so completely agree data should live with them.

My concern is that there's no easy way for developers to actually reconcile between the two API's. This basic query gives an example of the problem we face

curl http://api.launchdashboard.space/v2/launches/spacex/ | jq

I am observing miss matching flight numbers which is not ideal because we can't use that as a key. Furthermore, i also observe a missmatch between mission identifiers which means we can't use that as key either.

Some examples

NROL-108 flight number 112 vs 117
starlink-11 flight_number 102 vs 105
Saocom-1b flight_number 101 vs 104

Suggestion that they should match

Can i suggest that we look to support their 'launch_library_2_id' key as a new property to the launch schema. Or alternatively, we could utilize the links array and provide a URL to the telemetry data? Ideally, a new field would be best to allow greatest control over what what developers can do with the key. I see this as the best way to ensure consistency across the API's without both repos having to reconcile and fix miss-matches as a going concern.

Also happy to raise this ticket against them, but i fear it will keep happening.

Thanks for your great work.

[spacexdash]

Hi - just wondering if you had any thoughts on this? I have done a bit more research and it seems there's a wealth of API's supporting launchlibrary2id. For example, flightclub.io, launch dashboard IO and spaceflightnewsapi. I was chatting with the maintianers on discord (they have a 'The Space Devs' server where they colloborate across APIs) and they didn't take issue with another API supporting their identifier.

[jakewmeyer]

All for adding a launch library v2 id 👍

[spacexdash]

Awesome - let me know if i can assist in anyway.

[jakewmeyer]

Got this knocked out over the weekend, going forward the next launch up should be automatically matched with the corresponding launch library v2 launch, and the field launch_library_id was added to launches.

Only think I haven't done is backfilling the existing launches, but that might take a bit, since a good amount need to be manually matched.

[spacexdash]

That's awesome! Yep understand backfilling will take some time. Thank you very much.

[ItsCalebJones]

Hey there! I'm a dev with TheSpaceDevs here's a gist of a POC I had for syncing SpaceX API and LL2 IDs - could be helpful. The Launch object is a LL object from the launch endpoint - can simply iterate through SpaceX launches.

https://gist.github.com/ItsCalebJones/1c38922507808b52dc744bc7593568df

[jakewmeyer]

@ItsCalebJones I'll probably switch to your approach, time deltas are much easier to match with vs. my current implementation matching the mission names 👍