Request: limited pilot scheduling rights (no own station yet) – automated plan → observe → retrieve loop

Generic
1

Hello SatNOGS team and community,

I am building a small research prototype that reads public SatNOGS data and judges whether satellites are being heard. It works like this:

  • It computes SGP4 passes from SatNOGS DB TLEs.
  • It reads observation results from the Network API.
  • It is read-only and stays within the API throttle.
  • It credits SatNOGS (CC BY-SA 4.0) on every output.
  • It has no uplink or command capability, and it skips military satellites.

The next step is a closed loop. The software plans an observation, the observation is scheduled on a station, and the software retrieves and judges the result. I do not own a ground station yet, so before buying hardware I would like to ask two questions.

1. Could you grant a limited pilot scheduling permission? Proposed scope:

  • Satellite: UWE-4 (43880), Mode U FSK 9600 AX.25 at 435.600 MHz. Backup: CANVAS (68635).
  • Stations: only Online, available stations that already received this satellite in recent observations. Never stations whose owners opt out.
  • Passes: elevation ≥ 20°.
  • Volume: at most 20 observations over 14 days, and at most 3 per day.
  • Results: every observation is linked publicly, and I will post a short summary of the outcome in this thread.

2. If that is not possible, what activity and qualifications are needed for the Operator role? Or is setting up my own station the expected path?

I am happy to follow any scheduling etiquette you prefer. I can share the planning and judging code on request. The prototype was developed with the help of an AI coding assistant, and I review and submit every request myself.

Thank you for running this network.

— Maven Jang

2

Hi @mavenjang and welcome in the community!

There isn’t such type of permission, in order to schedule to other stations you need to setup your own.

However you can use network-dev.satnogs.org and db-dev.satnogs.org for testing purposes creating one or more stations and experiment with them.

3

That is clear, thank you, and thanks for the quick answer. We do not have a station yet, so we will not schedule on the production network; we will look at network-dev and db-dev for testing first.