Automated ISS Position Tracking to Kafka

This workflow continuously fetches the International Space Station’s (ISS) current position data and publishes it to a Kafka topic for real-time analytics or monitoring. It is scheduled to run every minute, ensuring up-to-date information is always available.

Here’s how the workflow operates:

1. The process begins with a Cron node set to trigger every minute, enabling frequent updates.

2. Once triggered, the Cron node activates an HTTP Request node that makes a GET request to the ISS position API at ‘https://api.wheretheiss.at/v1/satellites/25544/positions’. The request includes the current timestamp as a query parameter.

3. The API response, which contains the latest ISS position data, is captured by the HTTP Request node.

4. The Set node then extracts relevant data from the API response, including the satellite’s name, latitude, longitude, and timestamp.

5. Finally, this structured information is sent to a Kafka topic named ‘iss-position’, where it can be consumed by other services or stored for analysis.

This workflow is particularly useful for real-time tracking dashboards, space monitoring systems, or educational applications that need live ISS data at regular intervals.