Introduction to the project

ISS Transit email-alert signup page

Technical nitty-gritty

Links & Informational Resources

Released Software

Source Code

SourceForge project page

Project Goals

Other than, specifically, to predict transits of the ISS across the sun & moon, this project lacks particular goals, and so the directions that the project may take are unconstrained- except by the spare time available to the contributors!  In the most general sense, the project's goal is to provide a code base that will allow contributors- and independent developers- to quickly develop their own sophisticated applications, or perhaps a "new flavor" of an existing application.

To Do:

• convert Earth-centered inertial coordinates to latitude & longitude to answer the question, "Where is the space station now?"
• write a class that will access the most current ISS 2-line element (from wherever) and provide it to the TwoLineElement class
• use my SunriseGUI program, and Mark Huss' AstroLib package, to provide the sun & moon positions in ECI coordinates
• develop code to determine where (if...) the object-ISS line intersects the surface of the earth
• develop mapping classes for display of transit tracks

Questions:

• How do you deal with a non-spherical earth (i.e., oblateness)?
• atmospheric refraction?  (Important near the horizon, for that rare photo of the ISS passing in front of the setting sun!)

updated 26 Jan 2003