[amsat-bb] ISS "running late"

[Joseph B. Fitzgerald]

It seems that NASA is retiring the system that provides the report containing ISS orbital data, and a new comment to that effect in the report confused the nasabare.txt update script, so it was failing over to the most recent elements published in the weekly AMSAT bulletin which Ray Hoad derives from SpaceTrack.   I tweaked the script so nasabare.txt is updating properly now.   

This soon to be retired NASA system still provides elements in the "AMSAT Verbose" format that even we abandoned years ago.    For the old timers current elements are:

    Satellite: ISS
    Catalog Number: 25544
    Epoch time:      20323.25327528   =   yrday.fracday
    Element set:     906
    Inclination:       51.6450  deg
    RA of node:       306.1314  deg
    Eccentricity:     .0001516     
    Arg of perigee:    60.9923  deg
    Mean anomaly:     299.1379  deg
    Mean motion:   15.49080479  rev/day
    Decay rate:    1.67170E-04  rev/day^2
    Epoch rev:            1589
    Checksum:              314

The replacement system will provide orbital data in the form of "state vectors" (XYZ position and velocity) rather than the classical Keplerian elements, so I get to learn the subtleties of conversion.   My vocabulary word for the day: "osculating".

de KM1P Joe