XML Feed of Coords or TLE?

Is there an online source of ISS coordinates (2d - "point where the ISS
is currently overhead") or the TLE (Two Letter Epheremides)?

Although the coordinates would be easier for me to use, I suspect
sufficiently-accurate polling from only a handful of installations could
easily swamp the server. So a TLE that is updated every 24hrs might be
better. It means I would have to write code to convert the TLE into a
coordinate.

The best I've found so far, are sites like heavens-above.com and
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata...SS/SVPOST.html

Both would need to be screen-scraped - something I don't fancy doing, if
I can help it! An XML feed is much more preferable.

Apologies if this is an FAQ but I've done quite a bit of Googling and
although I've found a few web sites, most are down (eg. the NASA page
used by the Google Maps O'Reilly Hack) or would be difficult to use (eg.
screen scraping required rather than a simple XML request)

I intend to write a demo program from this. If successful then this will
lead to an article and the code being open-sourced.
The actual code that I wish to demonstrate has been written, but I'd
like a neat little application that is useful/interesting in its own
right! :-)


--
Richard Marsden
Winwaed Software Technology LLC
http://www.winwaed.com
Tools and Add-ins for MapPoint - http://www.mapping-tools.com

Is there an online source of ISS coordinates (2d - "point where the
ISS is currently overhead") or the TLE (Two Letter Epheremides)?

Uh, TLE is Two Line Elements (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements ).

Did you look at http://web.austin.utexas.edu/edcannon/elements.htm ?
That's titled 'Sources of Satellite "Two-Line" Orbital Elements'
and links to some sites which are said to have such things.
I didn't dig far enough to see how closely it matches what you are
looking for...

Jim Kingdon wrote:
Is there an online source of ISS coordinates (2d - "point where the
ISS is currently overhead") or the TLE (Two Letter Epheremides)?

Uh, TLE is Two Line Elements (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements ).

Thanks Jim.
It was about 15 years since I last dabbled with TLEs (in my Mir
photographing days), hence the elements/ephemeris confusion

Did you look at http://web.austin.utexas.edu/edcannon/elements.htm ?
That's titled 'Sources of Satellite "Two-Line" Orbital Elements'
and links to some sites which are said to have such things.
I didn't dig far enough to see how closely it matches what you are
looking for...

My previous searches didn't come up with those two pages. Links from the
first one look like they will be useful for implementing the algorithm.

Checking the second one, most of the links are pages that I'd previous
found and ruled out (eg. need registration), were quoted in my original
post, or similar problems.
However I did find the following Amsat text page:

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ftp/keps/current/nasa.all

This will be *much* easier to parse than the previous NASA html page
that I found. Also it has other satellites which will probably prove to
be a bonus.

Cheers,

Richard
--
Richard Marsden
Winwaed Software Technology LLC
http://www.winwaed.com
Tools and Add-ins for MapPoint - http://www.mapping-tools.com

Richard Marsden wrote:
[...]
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ftp/keps/current/nasa.all

Looks very similar to how Celestrak posts TLEs, and Dr Kelso has lotsa
extra info. And he dices and slices the TLEs into many different
collections.

Time I got to know this site again -- it's been a while since I
wandered around it.

/dps