Sattools is a collection of tools to facilitate Photographic and Video satellite tracking.

• Clone locally the code repository

• Install common dependencies

  • gfortran
  • gcc
  • libpng-dev
  • libx11-dev
  • libjpeg-dev
  • libexif-dev

• Build & install required libraries

  • qfits-5.2.0: ftp://ftp.eso.org/pub/qfits/qfits-5.2.0.tar.gz
  • pgplot-5.2.2: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/
  • gsl-1.15: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gsl/gsl-1.15.tar.gz
  • wcslib-2.9: http://www.epta.eu.org/~bassa/wcslib-2.9.tar

• Run make on the sattools folder

• Helper scripts install_dependencies.sh and install_sattools.sh are available at scripts directory. You can try run these scripts to install or use them as install guide. Note that install_dependencies.sh needs to be run with admin privileges (sudo ./install_dependencies.sh).

• If you re-run install_sattools.sh you should previously rmdir sattools directory or otherwise souces will not be fetched even if they are not present at that dir

• You will need to set the following environment variables to run sattools.
  • ST_COSPAR COSPAR number
  • ST_DATADIR path to sattools directory
  • ST_TLEDIR path to TLE directory
  • ST_OBSDIR path to observations directory
  • ST_LOGIN space-track.org login info (of the form ST_LOGIN="identity=username&password=password") These variables are set with default values after running install_sattools.sh (except ST_LOGIN).
• If you have multiple capture devices you will need to add a /etc/udev/rules.d/99-server.rules file to add symlinks and use them to address a particular camera. Sattools will automatically select the camera that is scheduled for each observation. You may use a command such as 'udevadm info -a -n /dev/video0' to get your capture device attributes and use that to create the rules file. A sample rules file is available as guide in data/ Note that symlinks to the rules file do not work, the rules file must be modified to suit your needs and copied to /etc/udev/rules.d/
• You should install NTP support on the system and configure time/date to automatically sinchronize to time servers.

• tleinfo: Display information about a set of TLEs. Example usage:

  • List values (SATNO, YEAR DOY, INCL, ASCN, ARGP, MA, ECC, MM) of the TLEs in the file bulk.tle: tleinfo -H -1
  • List orbital parameters (SEMI, PERIGEE, APOGEE, PERIOD, ECC) of the TLEs in the file bulk.tle: tleinfo -H -1 -a
  • Show human-readable info of the TLE for object 74001: tleinfo -i 74001 -f

• faketle: Calculate a TLE based on given orbit/launch parameters. Example usage:

  • Assuming a standard GTO launch from Cape Canaveral (latitude 28.5°N), GTO insertion burn (10° E, 0° N) at south-bound equator crossing +1655 seconds after launch, launch at 2019-02-22T01:45:00, perigee/apogee heights 258/59998 km, the pre-launch TLE can be generated with

    faketle -t 2019-02-22T01:45:00 -d 1655 -q 258 -Q 59998 -I 28.5 -m 0 -w 180 -n 10
    

• pass : Calculate the next passes above a given COSPAR site. Example usage:

  • List all ISS passes (NORAD ID 25544) at Dwingeloo Telescope (COSPAR site ID 9998) for the next 10 hours (3600 seconds) based on the TLE in catalog.tle (drop -a to only show the visible passes)

    pass -i 25544 -s 9998 -l 36000 -c $ST_TLEDIR/catalog.tle -a
    

  • Append -P in order to invoke skymap to plot a skymap and the sky track for each predicted pass

• satorbit: Show a 3D representation of the earth, the current position, footprint and orbit of the selected object Example usage:

  • Show ISS position, footprint and orbit

    satorbit -i 25544 -c $ST_TLEDIR/catalog.tle
    

• launchtle: This tool takes an input TLE and launchtime and then corrects the epoch of the TLE for the new launch time, and adjusts the right ascension of the ascending node for how much it would have changed between the old and new launch time. Example usage:

  • Use the given pre-launch TLE of object 70002 (stored in prelaunch.tle) associated with the original launch time of 2018-11-11T03:00:00Z to correct for the new launch time at 2018-11-11T05:00:00Z and store it with a new identifier (70003 here):

    launchtle -c prelaunch.tle -i 70002 -t 2018-11-11T03:00:00 -T 2018-11-11T05:00:00 -I 70003
    

• tleupdate: Update the local database of TLEs from various sources (Space-Track, inttles and classfd.zip). Usage:

  tleupdate