NASAWASH
2-line Keplerian Elements File Clean-Up

Must Be Art > Software > NASAWASH

Description

NASAWASH extracts valid 2-line Keplerian element sets from a text file, which may contain other text of various kinds.

NASAWASH is a command-line program that can be used standalone or as a filter.

System Requirements

To run the included executable, any environment capable of running well-behaved MS-DOS programs, including all versions of Windows, OS/2, and most DOS emulation environments.

The program should also be compilable on other command-line environments, such as Unix.

Features

• Command-line program
• Accepts Unix, MS-DOS, or Macintosh end-of-line terminators
• Removes non-Keplerian text before, after, or between element sets
• Removes line prefixes, such as email quoting characters
• Removes line suffixes
• Checks element set checksums
• Generates compatible element set checksums (no "+" signs)
• Runs as filter, or with specified input file, or with both input and output files specified

Limitations

• Does not interpret Keplerian elements to check validity of data
• Cannot fix corrupted element sets, such as those where runs of spaces have been replaced with single spaces
• Because NASAWASH is designed to run as a filter, invoking it with no arguments (and no command-line redirection) causes it to just sit there and do nothing. This is a feature, trust me.

Current Status

Stable. No current development plans. The current released version of NASAWASH is 0.5, released May 21, 1995, but recompiled and re-released in March 2002.

History

• May 1995 - Development started, released next day.
• March 2002 - Rebuilt executable (DOS only this time) for distribution.

Known Bugs

January 22, 2010 -- This week's KEPS bulletins from AMSAT included a plus sign in column 45 of the "1" line of some of the two-line element sets. NASAWASH 0.50 incorrectly rejects these element sets. Version 0.51 (forthcoming) corrects this problem.

Distribution

NASAWASH may be distributed freely (unmodified) and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes only.

Source Code

Source code in ANSI C is included.

Documentation

NASAWASH.TXT - user manual (plain text, 5K)

Keplerian Elements tutorial

NASA 2-line Element Set format definition

Download

NASAWASH 0.5 (zip file, 15K)

NASAWASH 0.5 (tgz file, for Unix, no executable, 6K)

Copyright 2002 Paul Williamson. Comments to kb5mu@amsat.org