Astro-SpaceTrack

DESCRIPTION

This library logs in to the Space Track web site and downloads orbital elements. It is also capable of accessing other sources of satellite orbital elements. It does nothing that you can't do with a web browser, but it does give you a way to automate things.

Note that you are required to register for a username and password before making use of the Space Track web site.

FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF DOWNLOADED ORBITAL ELEMENTS TO THIRD PARTIES WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION.

At some point along its career, this module has been seen to work under the following operating systems (or, more correctly, values of $^O): cygwin, darwin, MacOS, MSWin32, and VMS. CPAN Testers (http://testers.cpan.org/) adds Linux and Freebsd to the list.

INSTALLATION

This module is installable by the usual incantation:

gunzip Astro-SpaceTrack-9.999.tar.gz tar -xf Astro-SpaceTrack-9.999.tar
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

You should substitute the appropriate program name for 'make', eg nmake (typically) under MSWin32, or mms or mmk under VMS. See ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe for a copy of nmake for MSWin32 if you need it.

If your tar supports it, you can use the -z qualifier (i.e. 'tar -xzf') and skip the 'gunzip' step. You can also skip 'make' if you do 'make test', since 'make test' implies 'make'.

The 'make test' step of the installation will ask you for your Space Track username and password. This prompt can be supressed in a number of ways:

Set environment variable AUTOMATED_TESTING to a true value. This will cause all tests that access the Space Track web site to be skipped.
Set environment variable SPACETRACK_USER to your username, a slash, and your password. If you do this incorrectly, the tests that access the Space Track website will fail.

If you do not have a Space Track account, a return when prompted for your username will also cause the tests that access the Space Track database to be skipped.

Note that once you have done the "make" step you can play with either of the two specimen applications provided (SpaceTrack for a command-line version, or SpaceTrackTk for the Perl/Tk windowed version). If you want to do this before installing, you need to invoke them as (e.g.)

$ perl -Mblib bin/SpaceTrack
Under VMS, you'll need to quote the -M thus:

$ perl "-Mblib" bin/SpaceTrack

By default, Makefile.PL will ask you whether you want the SpaceTrack and/or SpaceTrackTk applications installed. It supports two command-line qualifiers:
-n to answer all questions "no", and
-y to answer all questions "yes".
You must not specify both of these, because if you do it will confuse the bejeebers out of Makefile.PL, and it will die horribly.

Of course, since it's pure Perl, you can just expand the kit and drop SpaceTrack.pm and the SpaceTrack folder into the Astro directory (creating it if necessary) in the appropriate place in your @INC directories. Read Makefile.PL for how to generate the applications.

LICENSING INFORMATION

This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl 5.10.0. For more details, see the full text of the licenses in the directory LICENSES.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.