The key components of the Orbital Solution Portal are ephemerides with error bars, general perturbations with error bars, and equivalent general perturbation information in “old style” TLE format for backwards compatibility. Each of these must include functionality for efficiently uploading new orbital solutions as well as querying, filtering, downloading, and/or visualizing them. In addition, the portal should include a guide for operators to follow when designing their data formats and sharing protocols.
3.4.1. SatHub’s Orbital Solution Portal
Third-party websites such as Celestrak and Space-Track are presently the primary public-facing access points for observers and other interested parties to retrieve orbital solution data. We propose a more centralized and operator-supported portal to publicly share orbital solutions. In some ways, the data provided will be redundant, but it will utilize standard formats and clear documentation to markedly increase accessibility and usability and enable new researchers looking at satellites to get started more efficiently. It also avoids a single-point failure scenario should a resource outside of observers’ control cease functioning.
The Orbital Solution Portal will also deliver significant value to satellite operators who wish to avoid collisions with one another, collaborate with astronomers on darkening mitigation experiments, and more easily visualize their own constellation’s present and past states. The Orbital Solution Portal provides an opportunity for operators to contribute not only data, but also funding to operate a public service which serves their data in an accessible way.
In line with the Algorithms Working Group’s proposed ephemeris database, old orbital solution information should be archived for long-term longevity in the Orbital Solution Portal. This allows coincidentally observed satellites to be identified and characterized, and is particularly important for studies using archival survey data.
3.4.2. Astronomers and operators collaborating on open source software
At present, there are only a handful of satellite forecasting software packages available (e.g., OrbDetPy[1] and LEOsat Visibility Tool (LVT)[2]). Satellite forecasting is important for both avoiding satellites and planning intentional observations of satellites, and historically, much of the software behind this capability is proprietary and inaccessible to outsiders. For example, Celestrak uses Systems Tool Kit (STK) to generate supplemental TLEs from operator-provided ephemerides, which in turn requires proprietary space weather data as another input.
In addition to key portions of the Software Tools aspect of SatHub, described in detail in the Algorithms Working Group Report, astronomers and operators should collaborate on an open source software package that parses various forms of orbital solution data. This tool should translate between spreadsheet/Comma-Separated Values (CSV) formats, backwards-compatible TLEs, general
