The data for this week’s TidyTuesday is on the number of objects launched into outer space by different countries/entities annually. This data was collected through the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs who has been maintaining the data since 1962, and is based on national registers submitted to the UN by participating nations, capturing an estimated 88% of all objects launched. An object in this dataset is defined as satellites, probes, landers, crewed spacecrafts and space station flight elements launched into Earth’s orbit or beyond.

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##  Downloading file 1 of 1: `outer_space_objects.csv`

For my first visualization I decided to make a choropleth map showing the world, the individual countries and how many launches they have made all time. This data seemed perfect to make a choropleth map since it had data on all participating countries and even though some of the data points were entities rather than countries(for example the European Space Agency), by merging the data we can get a better look at the countries and how they compare all time. This map has some interactivity since you can hover over a country and it will tell you what that country is, and then total launches it has all time. I found it cool to be able to see every country participating in space exploration outside of the main players you would expect like major world powers. It was interesting to see that the United States was so far ahead of everyone else in terms of launches, but I thought there was more to explore with this data, so I did just that in the next entry.

https://caseypridgen.shinyapps.io/TIDYAPPTWO/ For this visualization I made an app of an interactive line plot of the top entities in terms of launches all time. I thought this could tell us some more info on the launch data as it will show the changes in launch rate over time rather than just a grand sum. This would also allow us to look at entities as well as countries and see how they compare. The only entity involved was the European Space Agency(ESA) mentioned prior, and after some research I found it consisted of 22 European countries, some of which were top launchers themselves. To resolve this issue I removed all the members of the union under the ESA title that would have fallen within the top launchers. What I found interesting my first time looking at the data was that the United States, especially in recent years, has dominated everyone in terms of annual launches, so much so that it made it hard to tell how the other countries and entities were compared to each other. To solve this issue I made an app which allows you to switch between a regular and logarithmic y axis for the number of launches. The regular allows you to see the massive lead the United States has over everyone else, while the logarithmic gives a better look at the other players and how they compare over time. This app also allows you to select which countries/entities are shown in order to compare two or more to each other. Another interesting note was that Russia was consistently launching more objects than the United States until the end of the Cold War Era, and they have yet to return to their peak. For this visualization I made an app of an interactive line plot of the top entities in terms of launches all time. I thought this could tell us some more information as it will show the changes in launch rate over time rather than just a grand sum. This would also allow us to look at entities as well as countries and see how they compare. The only entity involved was the European Space Agency(ESA) mentioned prior, and after some research I found it consisted of 22 European countries, some of which were top launchers themselves. To resolve this issue I summed all the members of the union under the ESA title and had it in the visualization. What I found interesting my first time looking at the data was that the United States, especially in recent years, has dominated everyone in terms of annual launches, so much so that it made it hard to tell how the other countries and entities were compared to each other. To solve this issue I made an app which allows you to switch between a regular and logarithmic y axis for the number of launches. The regular allows you to see the massive lead the United States has over everyone else, while the logarithmic gives a better look at the other players and how they compare over time. This app also allows you to select which countries/entities are shown in order to compare two or more to each other. Another interesting note was that Russia was consistently launching more objects than the United States until the end of the Cold War Era, and they have yet to return to their peak.