SatLib

Overview

SatLib is a python library for constellation based calculations. Much of it is based on Poliastro and extends it for use with satellite constellations. Fundamental functionality such as propagating constellations, determining constellation access to ground stations, and determining when satellites in the constellation have windows of opportunity to perform inter-satellite links are included in the library. The main classes are contained in satbox.py and instructions to run an example notebook that showcase some of the capabilities are included below. Note: This library is still under development.

Running the example notebook

This tutorial assumes working knowledge of the terminal with git installed. There are many resources online to learn from if you need. You should also have a working version of python, or you can download it here. This tutorial was tested using python 3.7.3

Draft documentation is under docs/_build/html/index.html, which you can open in your browser.

Initialize Git

Begin by moving to a directory that you want to work in and initialize git if needed git init

Create a virtual environment

I suggest creating a virtual environment Example: python3 -m venv satelliteExample, which you type in the terminal

Activate your environment:

source satelliteExample/bin/activate

Clone the library:

git clone https://github.com/manweichan/SatLib.git

Change to the SatLib directory:

cd SatLib

Install the relevant packages using:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Alternatively, install each library individually (Make sure correct version numbers are installed by looking at requirements.txt)

pip install notebook

pip install numpy

pip install poliastro

pip install poliastro czml3

pip install seaborn

pip install dill

Start Jupyter Notebook

Once the libraries are installed, open up a jupyter notebook with the command: jupyter notebook

Open notebook

Open satbox_ex.ipynb

Run the notebook!

Other notebooks to look at include

satbox_czml_ex.ipynb - Example notebook of how to create czml files for Cesium

RGT_maneuver_ex.ipynb - Exmple notebook of how to reconfigure satellites into repeat ground track orbits over a target site

constellation_performance.ipynb - Example notebook of how to extract constellation performance from metrics: Age of information, system response time, and total pass time