orbitx

Propagate satellite orbits to identify matchups.

orbitx computes satellite ground-track positions from TLE data and identifies instances where two satellite swaths overlap in space and time.

Warning: This software is in beta. Results should be used with caution. Please share any feedback via the issue tracker.

Usage

Virtual environment

It is always recommended to use a virtual environment for each Python project. Use your preferred environment manager, or create one with:

python -m venv venv

Activate it on Windows with venv\Scripts\activate, or on macOS/Linux with source venv/bin/activate.

Installation

Install the package and its core dependencies:

pip install orbitx

Or in editable mode when working from source:

pip install -e .

Optional extras are available depending on your use case:

pip install -e ".[dev]"   # Development tools (ruff, mypy, pytest, …)
pip install -e ".[docs]"  # Documentation build (sphinx, …)

Orekit (optional)

Orbit propagation using the Orekit library requires orekit, which is available on conda-forge but not on PyPI. Install it separately if needed:

conda install -c conda-forge orekit

Development

Install the pre-commit hooks after cloning:

pre-commit install

When you commit, ruff will lint and format your code. If it makes corrections the commit will be aborted so you can review the changes — just commit again once you are happy.

Run the test suite with:

pytest

Documentation

Build the docs locally with:

sphinx-build docs docs/_build -b html

The documentation is also available online at the GitLab pages site.

Change requests

If you would like additional functionality or have spotted a bug, please open an issue in the GitLab repository.

Compatibility

orbitx requires Python 3.11 or later and is tested on Python 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13.

Licence

orbitx is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPLv3). See the LICENSE file for the full licence text.

Authors

orbitx is developed and maintained by the MetEOR Toolkit Team.