darksidelemm

TLE Estimation for an Upcoming Rocket Launch

• Date: 2020-11-15
• Author: Mark Jessop vk5qi@rfhead.net

Scenario: RocketLab are launching 30 small-sats into space in a few days. We know that one of them is going to be transmitting on the amateur radio bands, but we haven't been able to obtain a pre-launch TLE yet. We want to get setup to use strf to listen for beacon signals (see my guide here), but we need to know when to expect the satellites. We have some basic orbital information from a press release, so how can we use this to estimate a TLE for prediction purposes?

Note: I am approaching this from the point-of-view of someone who really don't know much about orbital mechanics. I'm relying heavily on the experience of others, and the content below is my attempt at documenting the process taken.

Thanks to Cees Bassa for the amazing software as always...

avataru

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beevelop

<div style="page-break-after: always;"></div>

samuelkordik

<?php
/**
 * Handles backing up database automatically and emailing it to me.
 */
date_default_timezone_set('America/Chicago'); // necessary in some server environments before using any Date/Time functions.
$timestart = microtime(true);

config(); // sets up constants and configurations for database credentials, error handling, etc. including using local environment specific options.

$filename = backup_tables(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_NAME); // backs up data.