[amsat-bb] Re: Satellite Orbit Prediction in Python

[Josh Smith]

Mark,
Thanks for the link - I've been considering trying to cobble together
a "web service" that will create an ical or rss feed of upcoming
passes over my QTH.  Hopefully this library is the kick in the rear
end I need to get working on this.


Thanks,
Josh Smith
KD8HRX
email/jabber:  juicewvu at gmail.com
phone:  304.237.9369(c)





On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Mark VandeWettering <kf6kyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just thought I'd drop a quick note here about some fun I've been
> having today with satellite orbit prediction in Python.   When I
> started mucking around with satellites, I used "predict", which was
> pretty good, but at some point I wanted to answer some questions which
> weren't easy to answer using predict.   Questions like "when will
> AO-51 be visible from both my home in CM87 and locations in Hawaii",
> or "what was the radius of the circle of visibility for AO-7 compared
> to ISS"?
>
> Luckily, I'm a programmer.   In fact, I'm a programmer who programs
> for fun.   So, I did a bit of research, and then coded up a version of
> G3RUH's "Plan 13" algorithm in Python, and then wrote some scripts to
> download elements from celestrak, and then a simple one to print data
> on the next pass of any named satellite.     And, they worked pretty
> good.  I've used them for the last year or so to do all my pass
> predictions.   But there are still a couple of minor issues with the
> library.  It didn't handle geosynchronous satellites very well.   It
> implemented only the most basic of orbital models.   I was never
> confident that the "is this satellite in eclipse" stuff working
> exactly right.
>
> Luckily though, it turns out that someone else has been busy writing a
> more complete library: PyEphem http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/
>
> It's a library whose primary purpose is to calculate the positions of
> astronomical objects.    I've used it a couple of times to (for
> instance) figure out the size of Mars compared to Jupiter, and found
> it very easy to use.   But today, I realized that it had a full
> implementation of the SGP4 and SDP4 orbital models built in, and could
> be used to predict satellite passes.    As a proof of concept, I
> hacked together a 23 line script that could print the details of
> upcoming ISS passes.   It seems to work great, and is really quite
> easy to use.
>
> You can find some of the simple example code at my blog:
>
> http://brainwagon.org/2009/09/27/how-to-use-python-to-predict-satellite-locations/
>
> I'll probably be porting all of my existing scripts to use this soon.
>  In the mean time, if you have a similar task, you might look to it to
> solve your custom satellite prediction problems.
>
> 73 Mark K6HX
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