This is one of the communities that seems to include people around the world, perhaps someone could answer a question?
There are many satellite catalogs - one of the most important is Space-Track.org, they assign satellite numbers and COSPAR identifiers. They usually get it right but mistakes happen pretty frequently. You can get current and historical information.
Then there is ISON, my second source for most orbital parameters. They prefer to deal with objects who’s “period” is over 200 minutes and their information is delayed (still by 2 weeks I think). You can get current and historical information. They do not assign satellite numbers, etc.
Of course CelesTrak - which mostly just repeats information from Space-Track but has some unique information and frequently catches Space-Track.org’s mistakes. They do not track satellites so do not supply original orbital information from tracking data.
There here is Jonathan’s and web pages like Heaven’s Above. They have useful information but do not supply original orbital parameters.
I don’t see a Libre Space satellite catalog… There are some CubeSat sources that get orbits from telemetry tracking.
And there is SeeSat (I am a contributing member) with original orbital information but no historical data.
Then there are some “nice but what are they here for?” sites like Astriagraph. And there are commercial organizations like LeoLabs, ComSpOC, etc - they sell information.
What about sites in Japan, China, etc? Does anyone there have a web page with orbital parameters - especially if they have historical parameters?
The SatNOGS DB does stores all historic orbital data, but currently only the latest orbital data is available via the web interface & API. I hope this will change in the future.
Data Sources for Orbital Data in SatNOGS DB:
Celestrak/Space-Track. TLEs are fetched on a regular basis
additional automated TLE sources (e.g. CalPoly or AMSAT)
manual input by admins (e.g. from RF tracking or provided by satellite teams)
Data Sources for Satellite Telemetry in SatNOGS DB:
SatNOGS Network (from automated stations run by contributors)
directly from Contributors (via stand-alone telemetry forwarder software)
Data Sources for Metadata in SatNOGS DB:
The users (“moderators”). They provide satellite name, transmitter information, country of origin, operational status and more
This post only focused on the current status and I leave it to others to describe future plans around SatNOGS and Satellite Catalogs.
the space-track catalog is slated to be migrated to the Dept of Commerce, NOAA, as the OADR, Open Architecture Data Repository. This should happen in 2024.
However, the focus is on commercial businesses and not sure if the open source community is tracking these changes, as space-track products may change. For example, the TLE is deprecated, so that may not survive the migration.
We have heard about the Satellite Catalog migrating (and I am eager for it to do so) but it hasn’t happened yet and I have grown skeptical. Does anyone else have the infrastructure or budget to maintain it yet? And isn’t the OADR a military (promised) product which has also not yet been released into the wild? When will that happen and where is it going to live?
The TLE will finally be put out of its misery one of these days.
The new catalog should be at some NOAA site sometime in 2024. SPACECOMM will continue to own the authoritative high accuracy catalog, and the NOAA one will be a port of the public/unclassified side, and hopefully feeds from other sensor networks.
Commercial companies such as COMSPOC, LeoLabs, AGI, etc. also have catalogs which i imagine is a mix of sources, but the primary is likely the SPACECOMM one. The OADR is a civil product primarily to offload commercial SSA from the SpaceForce SSN, so SF can focus on national security.
space-track has already deprecated the TLE and unsure if this product will be available with the OADR.
And I had talked to one of the guys developing the OADR and he described it as a closed system where you needed a government account to access it, has that changed?
And there are a number of satellite catalogs - just very few where people can use them (unless you are a customer, government person, etc).
It isn’t designed to be a closed system although there is some talk about fee-based enhanced services. Basic Services should be continued, and I would push for at least the General Perturbations (GP) using JSON over REST.
you don’t see a 2LE or 3LE? space-track still offers those and Alpha 5 isn’t required yet.
I’m hoping the open source community stays on top of this, and I would like to one day find the root sources of the space catalog data. Fabian suggested interested folks like us to help describe future SatNOGS and Satellite catalogs.
the EUSST has a catalog, but only for nation partners
Barry - you are talking about TruSat and the earlier DARPA effort to create an open source Satellite Catalog. Wow that is a tough nut to crack. And I have “talked” to the EU people (and so have my partners in Ukraine) and they like their closed system. Charles
