Two-line element set

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A two-line element set (TLE) is a data format encoding a list of orbital elements of

an Earth-orbiting object for a given point in time, the epoch. Using a suitable
prediction formula, the state (position and velocity) at any point in the past or future
can be estimated to some accuracy.
The TLE data representation is specific to the simplified perturbations
models (SGP, SGP4, SDP4, SGP8 and SDP8), so any algorithm using a TLE as a
data source must implement one of the SGP models to correctly compute the state
at a time of interest.
TLEs can describe the trajectories only of Earth-orbiting objects. TLEs are widely
used as input for projecting the future orbital tracks of space debris for purposes of
characterizing "future debris events to support risk analysis, close approach
analysis, collision avoidance maneuvering" and forensic analysis.[1]
The format was originally intended for punch cards, encoding a set of elements on
two standard 80-column cards. This format was eventually replaced by text files
[when?]
 with each set of elements written to two 69-column ASCII lines preceded by a
title line. The United States Air Force tracks all detectable objects in Earth orbit,
creating a corresponding TLE for each object, and makes publicly available TLEs for
many of the space objects on the website Space Track, [2][3] holding back or
obfuscating data on many military or classified objects. The TLE format is a de
facto standard for distribution of an Earth-orbiting object's orbital elements.
A TLE set may include a title line preceding the element data, so each listing may
take up three lines in the file. The title is not required, as each data line includes a
unique object identifier code.

History
In the early 1960s, Max Lane developed mathematical models for predicting the locations of
satellites based on a minimal set of data elements. His first paper on the topic, published in 1965,
introduced the Analytical Drag Theory, which concerned itself primarily with the effects of drag
caused by a spherically-symmetric non-rotating atmosphere. [4] Joined by K. Cranford, the two
published an improved model in 1969 that added various harmonic effects due to Earth-Moon-
Sun interactions and various other inputs.[5]
Lane's models were widely used by the military and NASA starting in the late 1960s. The
improved version became the standard model for NORAD in the early 1970s, which ultimately
led to the creation of the TLE format. At the time there were two formats designed for punch
cards, an "internal format" that used three cards encoding complete details for the satellite
(including name and other data), and the two card "transmission format" that listed only those
elements that were subject to change. [6] The latter saved on cards and produced smaller decks
when updating the databases.
Cranford continued to work on the modelling, eventually leading Lane to publish Spacetrack
Report #2 detailing the Air Force General Perturbation theory, or AFGP4. The paper also
described two simplified versions of the system, IGP4 which used a simplified drag model, and
SGP4 (Simplified General Perturbations) which used IGP4's drag model along with a simplified
gravity model.[7] The differences between the three models were slight for most objects. One year
later, Spacetrack Report #3 was released, included full FORTRAN source code for the SGP4
model.[8] This quickly became the de facto standard model, both in the industry as well as the
astronomy field.

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Shortly after the publication of Report #3, NASA began posting elements for a variety of visible
and other well known objects in their periodic NASA Prediction Bulletins, which consisted of the
transmission format data in printed form. After trying for some time to convince NASA to release
these in electronic form, T.S. Kelso took matters into his own hands and began manually copying
the listings into text files which he distributed through his CelesTrak bulletin board system. This
revealed a problem in NASA's checksum system, which traced back to the lack of the plus
character (+) on the teletype machines used at NASA, which ultimately turned out to be a
problem from the punch card era that occurred when NORAD updated from the BCD
to EBCDIC character set on the computer sending out the updates. This problem went away
when Kelso began to receive data directly from NORAD in 1989. [9]
The SGP4 model was later extended with corrections for deep space objects, creating SDP4,
which used the same TLE input data. Over the years a number of more advanced prediction
models have been created, but these have not seen widespread use. This is due to the TLE not
containing the additional information needed by some of these formats, which makes it difficult to
find the elements needed to take advantages of the improved model. More subtly, the TLE data
is massaged in a fashion to improve the results when used with the SGP series models, which
may cause the predictions of other models to be less accurate than SGP when used with
common TLEs. The only new model to see widespread use is SGP8/SDP8, which were designed
to use the same data inputs and are relatively minor corrections to the SGP4 model.

Format
Originally there were two data formats used with the SGP models, one containing complete
details on the object known as the "internal format", and a second known as the "transmission
format" that was used to provide updates to that data.
The internal format used three 80-column punch cards. Each card started with a card number, 1,
2 or 3, and ended with the letter "G". For this reason, the system was often known as the "G-card
format". In addition to the orbital elements, the G-card included various flags like the launching
country and orbit type (geostationary, etc.), calculated values like the perigee altitude and visual
magnitude, and a 38-character comments field.
The transmission format is essentially a cut-down version of the G-card format, removing any
data that is not subject to change on a regular basis, or data that can be calculated using other
values. For instance, the perigee altitude from the G-card is not included as this can be
calculated from the other elements. What remains is the set of data needed to update the original
G-card data as additional measurements are made. The data is fit into 69 columns and does not
include a trailing character. TLEs are simply the transmission format data rendered as ASCII text.
An example TLE for the International Space Station:

ISS (ZARYA)
1 25544U 98067A 08264.51782528 -.00002182 00000-0 -11606-4 0 2927
2 25544 51.6416 247.4627 0006703 130.5360 325.0288 15.72125391563537

The meaning of this data is as follows:[10]

Title line

Field Columns Content Example

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 1 01–24 Satellite name ISS (ZARYA)

PAKTES 1A
1 43529U 18056A 21063.83423692 .00000286 00000-0 37713-4 0 9993
2 43529 97.9818 158.8727 0026461 354.2382 5.8524 14.87507556144125

LINE 1

Column
Field Content Example
s

1 01–01 Line number 1

2 03–07 Satellite catalog number 25544

3 08–08 Classification (U=Unclassified, C=Classified, S=Secret) [11] U

4 10–11 International Designator (last two digits of launch year) 98

5 12–14 International Designator (launch number of the year) 067

6 15–17 International Designator (piece of the launch) A

7 19–20 Epoch Year (last two digits of year) 08

8 21–32 Epoch (day of the year and fractional portion of the day) 264.51782528

First Derivative of Mean Motion aka the Ballistic

9 34–43 -.00002182
Coefficient [12]

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 Second Derivative of Mean Motion (decimal point
10 45–52 00000-0
assumed) [12]

Drag Term aka Radiation Pressure Coefficient

11 54–61 -11606-4
or BSTAR (decimal point assumed) [12]

Ephemeris type (internal use only - always zero in

12 63–63 0
distributed TLE data) [13]

Element set number. Incremented when a new TLE is

13 65–68 292
generated for this object. [12]

14 69–69 Checksum (modulo 10) 7

LINE 2

Fiel
Columns Content Example
d

1 01–01 Line number 2

2 03–07 Satellite Catalog number 25544

3 09–16 Inclination (degrees) 51.6416

Right Ascension of the Ascending

4 18–25 247.4627
Node (degrees)

5 27–33 Eccentricity (decimal point assumed) 0006703

6 35–42 Argument of Perigee (degrees) 130.5360

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 7 44–51 Mean Anomaly (degrees) 325.0288

8 53–63 Mean Motion (revolutions per day) 15.72125391

9 64–68 Revolution number at epoch (revolutions) 56353

10 69–69 Checksum (modulo 10) 7

Where decimal points are assumed, they are leading decimal points. The last two symbols in
Fields 10 and 11 of the first line give powers of 10 to apply to the preceding decimal. Thus, for
example, Field 11 (-11606-4) translates to -0.11606E-4 (−0.11606×10 −4).
The checksums for each line are calculated by adding all numerical digits on that line, including
the line number. One is added to the checksum for each negative sign (-) on that line. All other
non-digit characters are ignored.
For a body in a typical low Earth orbit, the accuracy that can be obtained with the SGP4 orbit
model is on the order of 1 km within a few days of the epoch of the element set. [14] The term "low
orbit" may refer to either the altitude (minimal or global) or orbital period of the body. Historically,
the SGP algorithms defines low orbit as an orbit of less-than 225 minutes.
Two-digit Epoch Years from 57-99 correspond to 1957-1999 and those from 00-56 correspond to
2000-2056.[15]
The maximum number of Satellite Catalog Numbers that can be encoded in a TLE is rapidly
being approached with the recent commercialization of space and several key break-up events
that have created a massive number of debris objects. Future adaptations of the TLE have been
imagined to extend the number of encodable Satellites within the TLE. [16]

Simplified perturbations models

Simplified perturbations models are a set of five mathematical models (SGP,
SGP4, SDP4, SGP8 and SDP8) used to calculate orbital state
vectors of satellites and space debris relative to the Earth-centered
inertial coordinate system. This set of models is often referred to collectively as
SGP4 due to the frequency of fuse o that model particularly with two-line element
sets produced by NORAD and NASA.
These models predict the effect of perturbations caused by the Earth’s shape, drag,
radiation, and gravitation effects from other bodies such as the sun and moon. [1]
[2]
 Simplified General Perturbations (SGP) models apply to near earth objects with
an orbital period of less than 225 minutes. Simplified Deep Space Perturbations
(SDP) models apply to objects with an orbital period greater than 225 minutes, which
corresponds to an altitude of 5,877.5 km, assuming a circular orbit.[3]
The SGP4 and SDP4 models were published along with sample code in FORTRAN
IV in 1988 with refinements over the original model to handle the larger number of
objects in orbit since. SGP8/SDP8 introduced additional improvements for
handling orbital decay.[3]
The SGP4 model has an error ~1 km at epoch and grows at ~1–3 km per day.[3] This
data is updated frequently in NASA and NORAD sources due to this error. The

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original SGP model was developed by Kozai in 1959, refined by Hilton & Kuhlman in
1966 and was originally used by the National Space Surveillance Control Center
(and later the United States Space Surveillance Network) for tracking of objects in
orbit. The SDP4 model has an error of 10 km at epoch.[1]
Deep space models SDP4 and SDP8 use only 'simplified drag' equations. Accuracy
is not a great concern here as high drag satellite cases do not remain in "deep
space" for very long as the orbit quickly becomes lower and near circular. SDP4 also
adds Lunar–Solar gravity perturbations to all orbits, and Earth resonance terms
specifically for 24-hour geostationary and 12-hour Molniya orbits.[2]
Additional revisions of the model were developed and published by 2010 by the
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in support of tracking of the SeaWiFS mission
and the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in support of Planetary Data System for navigational purposes of
numerous, mostly deep space, missions.[1][4] Current code libraries[5][6] use SGP4 and
SDP4 algorithms merged into a single codebase in 1990 [7] handling the range of
orbital periods which are usually referred to generically as SGP4. [7]

Epoch (astronomy)
In astronomy, an epoch or reference epoch is a moment in time used as a
reference point for some time-varying astronomical quantity. It is useful for
the celestial coordinates or orbital elements of a celestial body, as they are subject
to perturbations and vary with time.[1] These time-varying astronomical quantities
might include, for example, the mean longitude or mean anomaly of a body, the node
of its orbit relative to a reference plane, the direction of the apogee or aphelion of its
orbit, or the size of the major axis of its orbit.
The main use of astronomical quantities specified in this way is to calculate other
relevant parameters of motion, in order to predict future positions and velocities. The
applied tools of the disciplines of celestial mechanics or its subfield orbital
mechanics (for predicting orbital paths and positions for bodies in motion under the
gravitational effects of other bodies) can be used to generate an ephemeris, a table
of values giving the positions and velocities of astronomical objects in the sky at a
given time or times.
Astronomical quantities can be specified in any of several ways, for example, as
a polynomial function of the time-interval, with an epoch as a temporal point of origin
(this is a common current way of using an epoch). Alternatively, the time-varying
astronomical quantity can be expressed as a constant, equal to the measure that it
had at the epoch, leaving its variation over time to be specified in some other way—
for example, by a table, as was common during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The word epoch was often used in a different way in older astronomical literature,
e.g. during the 18th century, in connection with astronomical tables. At that time, it
was customary to denote as "epochs", not the standard date and time of origin for
time-varying astronomical quantities, but rather the values at that date and time of
those time-varying quantities themselves.[2] In accordance with that alternative
historical usage, an expression such as 'correcting the epochs' would refer to the
adjustment, usually by a small amount, of the values of the tabulated astronomical
quantities applicable to a fixed standard date and time of reference (and not, as

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might be expected from current usage, to a change from one date and time of
reference to a different date and time).

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