Orbit Predictor

Orbit Predictor is a Python library to propagate orbits of Earth-orbiting objects (satellites, ISS, Santa Claus, etc) using TLE (Two-Line Elements set)

All the hard work is done by Brandon Rhodes implementation of SGP4.

We can say Orbit predictor is kind of a "wrapper" for the python implementation of SGP4

To install it

You can install orbit-predictor from pypi:

pip install orbit-predictor

Use example

When will be the ISS over Argentina?

In [1]: from orbit_predictor.sources import EtcTLESource

In [2]: from orbit_predictor.locations import ARG

In [3]: source = EtcTLESource(filename="examples/iss.tle")

In [4]: predictor = source.get_predictor("ISS")

In [5]: predictor.get_next_pass(ARG)
Out[5]: 

In [6]: predicted_pass = _

In [7]: position = predictor.get_position(predicted_pass.aos)

In [8]: ARG.is_visible(position)  # Can I see the ISS from this location?
Out[8]: True

In [9]: import datetime

In [10]: position_delta = predictor.get_position(predicted_pass.los + datetime.timedelta(minutes=20))

In [11]: ARG.is_visible(position_delta)
Out[11]: False

In [12]: tomorrow = datetime.datetime.utcnow() + datetime.timedelta(days=1)

In [13]: predictor.get_next_pass(ARG, tomorrow, max_elevation_gt=20)
Out[13]: 

Simplified creation of predictor from TLE lines:

In [1]: import datetime

In [2]: from orbit_predictor.sources import get_predictor_from_tle_lines

In [3]: TLE_LINES = (
            "1 43204U 18015K   18339.11168986  .00000941  00000-0  42148-4 0  9999",
            "2 43204  97.3719 104.7825 0016180 271.1347 174.4597 15.23621941 46156")

In [4]: predictor = get_predictor_from_tle_lines(TLE_LINES)

In [5]: predictor.get_position(datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 1))
Out[5]: Position(when_utc=datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 1, 0, 0),
    position_ecef=(-5280.795613274576, -3977.487633239489, -2061.43227648734),
    velocity_ecef=(-2.4601788971676903, -0.47182217472755117, 7.167517631852518),
    error_estimate=None)

Currently you have available these sources

• Memorytlesource: in memory storage.
• EtcTLESource: a uniq TLE is stored in /etc/latest_tle
• WSTLESource: It reads a REST API currently used inside Satellogic. We are are working to make it publicly available.

How to contribute

• Write pep8 complaint code.
• Wrap the code on 100 collumns.
• Always use a branch for each feature and Merge Proposals.
• Always run the tests before to push. (test implies pep8 validation)