What's in a TLE? - poliastro/poliastro GitHub Wiki

  • Attractor = Earth
    • With specific gravitational parameter and harmonics, which might differ from the most recent ones
  • Propagator = SGP4
    • Models the effect of Earth's shape and atmospheric drag
    • We ignore deep-space satellites here
  • Frame = TEME
  • Epoch
  • Brouwer mean elements (n, e, i, Ω, ω, M)
  • Parameters for perturbation forces: (n' aka BC, n'', B*)
  • Metadata (catalog number, international designators, element set number, revolution number at epoch)

Current state of propagators

At the moment, all propagators in poliastro.twobody.propagation have this signature:

def propagator(k, r, v, tofs, rtol, **kwargs):
    ...

There are already proposals (#921, #922) to change this interface and introduce lower level layers.

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