[amsat-bb] Prototype Prediction web service

[David A. B. Johnson]

Hi,

I'm doing some work with RESTful web services and have thrown together a 
prediction service that generates XML.

For a URL of:

http://websat.g4dpz.cloudbees.net/api/position/25544  (the ISS catalogue 
number)

you get:

<trackPosition>
   <altitude>392</altitude>
   <azimuth>0.0</azimuth>
   <catalogueNumber>25544</catalogueNumber>
   <elevation>0.0</elevation>
   <latitude>8.3</latitude>
   <longitude>263.4</longitude>
   <setNumber>327</setNumber>
</trackPosition>

adding locator and amsl (metres)

http://websat.g4dpz.cloudbees.net/api/position/25544/locator/io82xl/amsl/200

you get:

<trackPosition>
   <altitude>392</altitude>
   <azimuth>278.8</azimuth>
   <catalogueNumber>25544</catalogueNumber>
   <elevation>-41.2</elevation>
   <latitude>8.3</latitude>
   <longitude>263.4</longitude>
   <setNumber>327</setNumber>
</trackPosition>

The keps are collect every 12 hours from AMSAT (nasabare) and CELESTRAK (amateur)
and the systems stores the latest keps for the catalogue number.

Hitting the refresh key on the browser gives you the latest position.

I've got more ideas for it:

next N hours AOS/TCA/LOS for single satellite
ditto for constellation of satellites
satellite name aliases for catalogue number

The code is written in Java based on my predict4java library and I'm quite happy to make it Open
Source if any project would be interested.

If you do try it, it may take a couple of seconds to start up as the server is in the Amazon Cloud
and goes to sleep after a period of inactivity.

73

Dave
G4DPZ