Program Overview

A page describing each aspect of the program can be found by clicking on the links to the left of the screen.

Although Setup is really a feature linked to the Main scren, it appears at the top of the list here to suggest you go there first and enter your personal preferences. Much of the program depends on information you enter on that screen. From then on, practically everything happens from the Main Screen, so that's were you will find links to pages describing the various features of the program.

Element Manager can extract elements from practically any DOS Text file (UNIX files will be detected and a "fix" routine will ask for permission to convert to DOS format). All the program needs to find are two consecutive lines in proper two line format. The two lines may be preceded or followed by blank spaces or tabs (they will be stripped). The lines may be separated by blank lines. If the title line of the element set (line0) is blank, or longer than 69 characters, Element Manager will look at a special file, SATNAME.DAT, and see if it can find a matching NORAD ID. If it does, it substitutes the name listed in SATNAME.DAT. If it can find no match then it looks for the International Launch Designation (ILD) data and uses this information to create a satellite name. If no ILD data are present then the NORAD ID is used.

Opening element files is accomplished via a number of different options. 

First and easiest, you can drag an element file from the Desktop, Explorer or where ever and drop it on a shortcut to the program or the program itself (no checksums on drag and drops). 

Next, using the File menu on the main screen select either "Open with Checksums" or  "without Checksums". It's much faster to load a file without verifying the checksums. Once elements are in the program you can use the Checksum verification option on the Utility menu to validate and optionally correct them.

There is a "Recent" option on the file menu. The last 4 files you've opened will be listed there in chronological order.

You can open EM, then open your web browser or email program or any text source of elements and cut and paste elements from those sources to the program. Using this option you are limited to no more than 300 element sets on the clipboard. It's really there to clip out elsets from email but is useful during shuttle flights when a quick visit to Nasa can provide up to date elements.

Element Manager can manipulate elements in a number of ways.

Selections to limit the number of active satellites based on the age, decay, inclination, eccentricity, mean motion, apogee,  perigee, argument of perigee, right ascension of ascending node, International Launch Designation, common name, visual magnitude and radar cross section are possible. Upper and lower limits can be set for each of these parameters (except for common name -  of course).

The program can make selections or exclusions by NORAD number. You can create multiple select files containing lists of satellites you are either interested in or wish to ignore. Element Manager reads this file, compares the element sets listed in the file to the currently active elements and depending on the setting on the Selection Screen either selects only the matching satellites for active display or removes matching satellites from the active display.

Element Manager first loads elements into a hidden database, then depending on the selections you make, displays only the satellites that match your selection criteria. Initially, all satellites are active.

You can sort the active displayed elements by ALL of the parameters (individually) in each element set in either ascending or descending order. Some of these parameters are essentially meaningless but ... I got carried away. 

During various operations satellites can be "Checked" on the main screen. It is also possible to sort the active elements by their checked status thus moving all the checked satellites to the top or bottom of the file.

Once you've selected and sorted out element sets of interest, you can save them to a new element file. You can also make a select file from these selected satellites. Then you can recreate the display by loading that select file and applying it to the active satellites.

There are six screens in the program that give you a different perspective on the active satellites.

The Main screen displays a list of all active satellites along with data about any individually selected satellite.

From the View Menu, you can select five additional displays.

You can search the active element sets for a particular satellite by either a partial name match or a NORAD ID match.

For a more detailed description of these features click on the link to the Main Screen (upper left) and follow the links from there to the feature you wish to explore.