Topography#

We will show how RocketPy interacts with Earth Topography. We mainly will use data provided by the NASADEM Merged DEM Global 1 arc second nc.

NASADEM is a digital elevation model based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), a collaboration between NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), as well as participation from the German and Italian space agencies.

Initialization#

Let us consider a fictional launch in Switzerland. First, we set the basic information about our Environment object

from rocketpy import Environment
env = Environment(latitude=46.90479, longitude=8.07575, datum="WGS84")

Note

The datum argument is used only for converting from geodesic (i.e. lat/lon) to the UTM coordinate system.

Set the topographic profile#

Now we set our topography

env.set_topographic_profile(
    type="NASADEM_HGT",
    file="../data/sites/switzerland/NASADEM_NC_n46e008.nc",
    dictionary="netCDF4",
    crs=None,
)

Region covered by the Topographical file: 
Latitude from 46.000000° to 47.000000°
Longitude from 8.000000° to 9.000000°

Find the launch site elevation#

Once the topographic profile is defined, we can find the launch site elevation

elevation = env.get_elevation_from_topographic_profile(env.latitude, env.longitude)
print(f"The elevation at latitude {env.latitude} and longitude {env.longitude} is {elevation} meters.")

The elevation at latitude 46.90479 and longitude 8.07575 is 1565 meters.

And finally set the elevation to the Environment object:

env.set_elevation(elevation)

Visualize information#

To check the elevation we have set, as well as other important attributes of our Environment object, we run the rocketpy.Environment.info() method:

env.prints.launch_site_details()

Launch Site Details

Launch Site Latitude: 46.90479°
Launch Site Longitude: 8.07575°
Reference Datum: WGS84
Launch Site UTM coordinates: 886538.30 E    5207102.17 N
Launch Site UTM zone: 31T
Launch Site Surface Elevation: 1565.0 m