Satellite Tracking Toolkit

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

Install

• 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

Run notes

• You will need to set the following environment variables to run sattools. These vars are set with default values after running install_sattolls.sh. ST_COSPAR COSPAR number ST_DATADIR path to sattools directory ST_TLEDIR path to TLE directory ST_OBSDIR path to observations directory
• 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.
• Modify stget.sh for your space-track.org login and password (--post-data='identity=login&password=password')

Tools

• 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