Adding New Satellite EIRSAT-1 to Gpredict for Tracking!

Adding New Satellite EIRSAT-1 to Gpredict for Tracking!

Earlier I had installed Gpredict satellite tracking software on Windows. Yesterday I could install it on Ubuntu Linux also, quite easily from the terminal. I have installed it mainly to try tracking the newly launched EIRSAT-1.

Initial Two Line Elements (TLE) was posted in our local LEO Satellite Repeater contact group. It was saved as a text file with name eirsat.tle in a directory on the computer. It has been mentioned that the intial TLE may change often as the satellite is stabilizing in orbit. So we may have to update it again.

Used this file to update in Gpredict using the ‘Update TLE form local files’ option. The local directory in which the TLE file was stored was browsed and clicked OK.

After that the click down menu on the top right corner was used to access the ‘Configure’ menu to display the satellite on the front display.

In the Edit module, search function was used to find EIRSAT-1 and it was double clicked to move to right  sided box. Alternatively, selecting and using the right arrow is also feasible.

As the next step, EIRSAT-1 was chosen from from the lower click down menu on the front panel and the live data started appearing near the polar map, which was vacant as no satellite was in range.

Click down menu was again used to ‘Show next pass’ of EIRSAT-1.

Selecting ‘Polar’ option gave a nice polar map of the next pass due in this region. Timings were displayed in the polar map.

Selecting ‘Az/El’ gives a graph plotting Azimuth and Elevation during the pass with respect to time.