by Ray Patrick
(other software)
NORAD two-line element set processor
I host tle at my Git server. To download tle, simply run:
git clone git://git.raypatrick.xyz/tle.git
cd tle
sudo make install
tle
is a NORAD two-line element set
(TLE or ELSET) processor. It is a simple
text
filter, meaning it handles the TLE data as a stream of plain
text and also provides plain text as its output. This allows you to
combine tle
with your built-in command-line utilities
in powerful ways to solve problems involving TLEs and orbital math,
but without the needless complexity and overhead you would get with
a GUI-driven program or a so-called Web application. Don't reinvent
the wheel!
The capabilities of tle
include:
These tasks can be done manually from the command line, or you can write your own wrapper scripts to do them automatically. In fact, because the dependencies are so light, any basic Unix-like system, including Web servers, Raspberry Pis or Arduinos, can run it with no trouble!
bc
or equivalentawk
, sed
, and grep
.
tle
installs with its own man page, which you can
view by running $ man tle
at the command
line. You can also run $ tle
(without any
arguments) to print an abbreviated set of usage instructions to
stdout. Here's a summary:
$ tle command (argument)
The basic invocation of tle follows the above syntax:
tle
, followed by a mandatory
command
, followed most of the
time by an argument
.
Here is a list of the possible commands with their arguments:
$ tle sat id
id
, which can be a NORAD catalog
number (sometimes called SATNO or SCC#) or an International
Designator (sometimes called a COSPAR ID) of the form
YYLLL(A...)
. For example, you can retrieve the TLE
for the International Space Station by using 25544
(SATNO) or 98067A
(int. des.) as the
id
argument. SATNOs with fewer than
5 significant digits must be padded with zeros, e.g.
00005
.
$ tle decode id
$ tle epochtime id
$ tle age id
$ tle places (name) or (edit)
name
is a name found
in places.csv
, displays
characteristics associated with that place
(latitude, longitude, elevation, look angle restrictions, and so
on.) If the word edit
is passed as
the argument, opens places.csv
in
$EDITOR
.
$ tle update (auto)
/usr/local/share/tle
). Will
prompt you for your space-track.org username and password unless given
the auto
argument, in which case it will
attempt to locate your saved username and password.
tle
is free software, released under the
GNU General Public License, version 3.
You are free (and I encourage you!) to copy, modify, and distribute
this software, in original or modified state, without anyone's
permission, as long as you also release it under this license.