Satellite Situation Report

If you have a copy of the Satellite Situation Report on your computer, you can pull this information up at any time. On the "Main Screen" just right click on a satellite and select "Sat Info" from the popup menu.

The Apogee and Perigee Values will be converted from kilometers to whatever measurement system is currently active in Element Manager.

The calculated elapsed time since the launch if the bird is in orbit and  launch and decay if it has reentered is made from your system time back to the launch/decay  dates.

If you press the "Save to File" button then all the data on the above screen EXCEPT for the full "Satellite Situation Report Totals", will be written to the file you specify. If you have the Siblings Report Open (covered next) then that information will be added to the bottom of the file your create. If you only want the Sat Sit Report data for the satellite, be sure to close (not minimize) the Sibling report.

Want to know what other satellites accompanied this bird into orbit? Click on "Find Siblings" to locate its relatives. There's probably a more accurate term for this relationship. Let me know if you are aware of it so I can adopt it.

This screen pops open with a listing of all satellites with the same ILD (minus the piece letter) with the "parent satellite highlighted in red. This screen will display up to 1000 matches as found in the Situation Report. The results are sorted into ascending ILDs. 

If a satellite is active in your element file that info is displayed and highlighted in Green. If you double Click its name, you are returned to the Main Screen with that satellite highlighted (if it is not present in your active file a message box so informs you).

You can save this report to a text file by clicking on the File Menu of this screen, or if you want the Satellite Situation Report data on the primary satellite that generated the Siblings report as well as the Siblings then either minimize this screen or use the Task Bar to switch to the Satellite Situation Report main screen and click "Save to File" from that screen. As long as the sibling report is open it will always be appended to the bottom of the Sat Sit Report data saved to a file.

A satellite may be listed as a sibling on this screen, but not be present in your Element File. To view the full details of that bird from the Situation report, right-click on it.

In the first screen, there is data on the total number of satellites for the "source" country of the satellite being displayed as well as cumulative data on the entire Situation report. If you wish to see the statistics for the entire Situation Report click on "Show Sit Report Boxscore". If you are not using  the FULL Situation report (maybe you only have the On-Orbit file active) then, you can click on "Show Personal Boxscore".  In either case, the following screen opens. If you've selected Personal Boxscore then the title of the screen reflects this. 

If you do select "Show Personal Boxscore" the numbers will be close but not identical to those in the Satellite Situation Report. I could only deduce three ways to identify debris. 

1. The name of the satellite includes the string "R/B". 

2. The name of the satellite includes the string "Plat"

3. The name of the satellite includes the string "Deb"

If a satellite does not contain any of these strings, then it's considered a Payload. Undoubtedly, there are objects in the Sit Report that do NOT contain these strings yet are indeed considered debris. Thus, when you select "Show Personal Boxscore" you will see MORE payloads and less debris for some countries. The Totals for each country are correct.

If anyone is aware of a "rule" I could apply to find more debris, I'd welcome that information. 

You must have at least Part A of the situation report available. 

To get this up up and running, go to the setup screen select the "Data Files" tab and enter the filename of the Satellite Situation Report as it exists on your computer. 

It is possible to enter two filenames for the program to use. The on-orbit stuff in one file, and the decayed satellites in the second file. You can use the Browse button to navigate around your hard disks to find them.

Where is this report?

This report comes in multiple files at the Nasa OIG site. Their web address is:

http://oig1.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Follow the links to "Reports".

I recommend, at a minimum, you get both of these files:

They contain a complete listing of all in-orbit satellites. If you archive decayed satellites or you are just interested in which "Siblings" of a launch have decayed, you might wish to get the decayed lists too.

These additional files will bring the entire decayed satellites Situation report onto your computer.

Open each report. When it has completed loading in your web browser, save each file as a text file.

ALL of these files are available in ONE ZIP file at the OIG website too. Might make it easier to acquire the whole batch. That's how I do it.

Then, using a text editor or the DOS copy command, combine the first two files into one large file with part A at the Top followed by part B.

If you want to track the decayed birds too, combine parts C through F into another file. I call mine "OnOrbit.rpt" and "DeOrbit.rpt". I also automate the combination by using a batch files with the commands:

copy PartA.txt+PartB.txt OnOrbit.rpt

copy PartC.txt+PartD.txt+PartE.txt+PartF.txt DeOrbit.text

Naturally, change the filenames to those appropriate to the files as saved on your system.

Element Manager looks at the first few hundred lines of your combined On-Orbit file for information about the date of the report, the volume of the report and the box score data (totaled data for each country). This data appears at the top of Part A so when you combine files A and B make sure you put A at the top or EM won't be able to fill out the box score and report data.

The Situation Report is updated monthly. However, unless you really need up to date info on recently launched birds, you may be satisfied with an occasional download of this information, say every few months.

I will NOT be distributing this file. The combined Part A and Part B files total around 1.3MB. It's up to you to obtain this data.

OIG is also a great place to find the latest orbital elements for all but classified satellites. But, I assume you know this if you're using Element Manager :-)

You can convert the Satellite Situation Report into a Comma Delimited spread sheet file. See the page covering that option.