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Datasets Commands

Download and query satellite ephemeris data and ground station information.

Overview

The datasets command group provides access to: - CelesTrak - Satellite TLE (Two-Line Element) data - Ground Stations - Commercial ground station network databases

CelesTrak Commands

celestrak download

Download satellite ephemeris data from CelesTrak and save to file.

Syntax:

brahe datasets celestrak download <GROUP> <FILEPATH>

Arguments: - GROUP - Satellite group name (e.g., 'stations', 'starlink', 'gps-ops') - FILEPATH - Output file path for TLE data

Examples:

Download space station TLEs:

brahe datasets celestrak download --group stations ~/satellite_data/stations.txt
Output:
 Downloaded stations satellites to ~/satellite_data/stations.txt

Download Starlink constellation:

brahe datasets celestrak download --group starlink ~/satellite_data/starlink.txt
Output:
 Downloaded stations satellites to ~/satellite_data/starlink.txt

Download GPS satellites:

brahe datasets celestrak download --group gps-ops ~/satellite_data/gps.txt
Output:
 Downloaded stations satellites to ~/satellite_data/gps.txt

See available groups:

brahe datasets celestrak list-groups


celestrak lookup

Look up a satellite by name and display its NORAD ID and TLE.

Syntax:

brahe datasets celestrak lookup <NAME>

Arguments: - NAME - Satellite name (partial match supported)

Examples:

Find ISS:

brahe datasets celestrak lookup "ISS"
Output:
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# ISS (ZARYA) [NORAD ID: 25544]

# TLE Lines:
#   1 25544U 98067A   25306.42331346  .00010070  00000+0  18610-3 0  9998
#   2 25544  51.6344 342.0717 0004969   8.9436 351.1640 15.49700017536601

# ✓ Found satellite 'ISS (ZARYA)'

Find Hubble Space Telescope:

brahe datasets celestrak lookup "HST"
Output:
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# HST [NORAD ID: 20580]

# TLE Lines:
#   1 20580U 90037B   25306.35384425  .00007204  00000+0  25387-3 0  9994
#   2 20580  28.4668 187.2184 0001915 134.9270 225.1481 15.27276544753814

# ✓ Found satellite 'HST'

Find by partial name:

brahe datasets celestrak lookup "CAPELLA"
Output:
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# CAPELLA-11 (ACADIA-1) [NORAD ID: 57693]

# TLE Lines:
#   1 57693U 23126A   25306.12190313 -.00002119  00000+0 -25509-3 0  9998
#   2 57693  53.0104  84.6427 0002550 126.4571 233.6640 14.78979627118491

# ✓ Found satellite 'CAPELLA-11 (ACADIA-1)'
(Shows first match)


celestrak show

Display TLE information and computed orbital parameters for a satellite.

Syntax:

brahe datasets celestrak show <NORAD_ID>

Arguments: - NORAD_ID - NORAD catalog ID (integer)

Examples:

Show ISS TLE and orbit info:

brahe datasets celestrak show 25544 -s
Output:
# ISS (ZARYA) [NORAD ID: 25544]

# TLE Lines:
#   Line 1: 1 25544U 98067A   25306.42331346  .00010070  00000+0  18610-3 0  9998
#   Line 2: 2 25544  51.6344 342.0717 0004969   8.9436 351.1640 15.49700017536601

# Orbital Elements:
#   Epoch:              2025-11-02 10:09:34.283 UTC
#   Ephemeris Age:      21h 16m 13s
#   Semi-major axis:    6795.7 km
#   Eccentricity:       0.0004969
#   Inclination:        51.6344°
#   RAAN:               342.0717°
#   Arg of Perigee:     8.9436°
#   Mean Anomaly:       351.1640°

# Orbital Characteristics:
#   Orbital Period:     92.9 min (1.55 hours)
#   Mean Motion:        15.497 rev/day
#   Perigee Altitude:   414.2 km
#   Apogee Altitude:    421.0 km

Show GPS satellite:

# brahe datasets celestrak show 32260
Output:
# ╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
# │ NAVSTAR 60 (USA 196)                                                                 │
# │ NORAD ID: 32260                                                                      │
# ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
# ╭───────────────────────────────────── TLE Lines ──────────────────────────────────────╮
# │  Line 1:  1 32260U 07047A   25305.87057871  .00000045  00000+0  00000+0 0  9996      │
# │  Line 2:  2 32260  53.9265  89.4464 0164696  84.6485 277.2299  2.00566111132250      │
# ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
# ╭────────────────────────────────── Orbital Elements ──────────────────────────────────╮
# │  Epoch            2025-11-01 20:53:38.001 UTC                                        │
# │  Ephemeris Age                 1d 10h 32m 23s                                        │
# │  Semi-major axis                   26560.1 km                                        │
# │  Eccentricity                       0.0164696                                        │
# │  Inclination                         53.9265°                                        │
# │  RAAN                                89.4464°                                        │
# │  Arg of Perigee                      84.6485°                                        │
# │  Mean Anomaly                       277.2299°                                        │
# ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
# ╭────────────────────────────── Orbital Characteristics ───────────────────────────────╮
# │  Orbital Period    718.0 min (11.97 hours)                                           │
# │  Mean Motion                 2.006 rev/day                                           │
# │  Perigee Altitude               19744.6 km                                           │
# │  Apogee Altitude                20619.4 km                                           │
# ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯


celestrak list-groups

List commonly used CelesTrak satellite groups.

Syntax:

brahe datasets celestrak list-groups

Examples:

brahe datasets celestrak list-groups
Output:
Common CelesTrak Satellite Groups

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
 Group Name            Description                                         ┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
 active                All active satellites                                stations              Space stations (ISS, Tiangong, etc.)                 last-30-days          Satellites launched in the last 30 days              gnss                  All GNSS satellites (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou)  gps-ops               Operational GPS satellites                           galileo               Galileo navigation satellites                        beidou                Beidou navigation satellites                         glo-ops               Operational GLONASS satellites                       geo                   Geostationary satellites                             gpz                   Geostationary protected zone satellites              gpz-plus              Geostationary protected zone plus satellites         weather               Weather satellites                                   noaa                  NOAA satellites                                      goes                  GOES weather satellites                              starlink              SpaceX Starlink constellation                        oneweb                OneWeb constellation                                 kuiper                Amazon Kuiper constellation                          qianfan               Qianfan constellation                                hulianwang            Hulianwang constellation                             planet                Planet Labs imaging satellites                       iridium               Iridium constellation                                iridium-NEXT          Iridium NEXT constellation                           intelsat              Intelsat satellites                                  eutelsat              Eutelsat satellites                                  ses                   SES satellites                                       orbcomm               Orbcomm satellites                                   globalstar            Globalstar satellites                                sarsat                Search and rescue satellites                         cubesat               CubeSats                                             amateur               Amateur radio satellites                             science               Science satellites                                   weather               Weather satellites                                   geodetic              Geodetic satellites                                  cosmos-2251-debris    Debris from Cosmos 2251 collision                    iridium-33-debris     Debris from Iridium 33 collision                     fengyun-1c-debris     Debris from Fengyun-1C ASAT test                     cosmos-1408-debris    Debris from Cosmos 1408 ASAT test                   └──────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


Search for satellites by name pattern within a group.

Syntax:

brahe datasets celestrak search <PATTERN> [OPTIONS]

Arguments: - PATTERN - Name search pattern (case-insensitive)

Options: - --group <name> - Satellite group to search (default: "active") - --table, -t - Display results as table - --columns <preset> - Columns to display: 'minimal', 'default', 'all', or comma-separated list

Examples:

Search for Capella satellites:

brahe datasets celestrak search "Capella"
Output:
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# CAPELLA-11 (ACADIA-1) (NORAD: 57693)
# CAPELLA-14 (ACADIA-4) (NORAD: 59444)
# CAPELLA-13 (ACADIA-3) (NORAD: 60419)
# CAPELLA-15 (ACADIA-5) (NORAD: 60544)
# CAPELLA-17 (ACADIA-7) (NORAD: 64583)
# CAPELLA-16 (ACADIA-6) (NORAD: 65318)

Search for GPS satellites in specific group:

brahe datasets celestrak search "GPS II" --group gps-ops
Output:
# GPS BIIR-2  (PRN 13) (NORAD: 24876)
# GPS BIIR-4  (PRN 20) (NORAD: 26360)
# GPS BIIR-5  (PRN 22) (NORAD: 26407)
# GPS BIIR-8  (PRN 16) (NORAD: 27663)
# GPS BIIR-11 (PRN 19) (NORAD: 28190)
# GPS BIIR-13 (PRN 02) (NORAD: 28474)
# GPS BIIRM-1 (PRN 17) (NORAD: 28874)
# GPS BIIRM-2 (PRN 31) (NORAD: 29486)
# GPS BIIRM-3 (PRN 12) (NORAD: 29601)
# GPS BIIRM-4 (PRN 15) (NORAD: 32260)
# GPS BIIRM-5 (PRN 29) (NORAD: 32384)
# GPS BIIRM-6 (PRN 07) (NORAD: 32711)
# GPS BIIRM-8 (PRN 05) (NORAD: 35752)

Search with table output:

brahe datasets celestrak search "CAPELLA" --group active --table
Output:
# ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┓
# ┃ Name               ┃ ID     ┃ Epoch                ┃ Age        ┃ Period (min) ┃ SMA (km)  ┃ Ecc      ┃ Inc (°) ┃ RAAN (°)  ┃ ArgP (°)  ┃ MA (°)  ┃
# ┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━┩
# │ CAPELLA-11         │ 57693  │ 2025-11-02           │ 1d 5h 13m  │ 97.4         │ 7010.7    │ 0.000255 │ 53.01   │ 84.64     │ 126.46    │ 233.66  │
# │ (ACADIA-1)         │        │ 02:55:32.430 UTC     │ 39s        │              │           │          │         │           │           │         │
# │ CAPELLA-14         │ 59444  │ 2025-11-02           │ 20h 33m 2s │ 95.7         │ 6930.2    │ 0.000330 │ 45.61   │ 6.37      │ 226.89    │ 133.18  │
# │ (ACADIA-4)         │        │ 11:36:09.001 UTC     │            │              │           │          │         │           │           │         │
# │ CAPELLA-13         │ 60419  │ 2025-11-01           │ 1d 23h 48m │ 96.8         │ 6983.4    │ 0.000158 │ 53.00   │ 332.08    │ 93.30     │ 266.82  │
# │ (ACADIA-3)         │        │ 08:20:23.000 UTC     │ 48s        │              │           │          │         │           │           │         │
# │ CAPELLA-15         │ 60544  │ 2025-11-01           │ 2d 4h 11m  │ 96.5         │ 6968.5    │ 0.000478 │ 97.70   │ 18.46     │ 121.04    │ 239.13  │
# │ (ACADIA-5)         │        │ 03:57:45.954 UTC     │ 25s        │              │           │          │         │           │           │         │
# │ CAPELLA-17         │ 64583  │ 2025-11-02           │ 1d 31m 29s │ 96.4         │ 6963.2    │ 0.000327 │ 97.76   │ 58.71     │ 21.22     │ 338.91  │
# │ (ACADIA-7)         │        │ 07:37:41.806 UTC     │            │              │           │          │         │           │           │         │
# │ CAPELLA-16         │ 65318  │ 2025-11-02           │ 1d 3h 57m  │ 96.6         │ 6973.1    │ 0.000296 │ 97.76   │ 19.81     │ 275.26    │ 84.83   │
# │ (ACADIA-6)         │        │ 04:11:12.548 UTC     │ 58s        │              │           │          │         │           │           │         │
# └────────────────────┴────────┴──────────────────────┴────────────┴──────────────┴───────────┴──────────┴─────────┴───────────┴───────────┴─────────┘


Ground Station Commands

groundstations list-providers

List available ground station providers.

Syntax:

brahe datasets groundstations list-providers

Examples:

brahe datasets groundstations list-providers
Output:
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# Available groundstation providers:
#   - atlas
#   - aws
#   - ksat
#   - leaf
#   - ssc
#   - viasat


groundstations list-stations

List ground stations, optionally filtered by provider.

Syntax:

brahe datasets groundstations list-stations [OPTIONS]

Options: - --provider <name> - Filter by provider name

Examples:

List all ground stations:

brahe datasets groundstations list-stations
Output:
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# All Groundstations (96 total):
#   Absheron: 40.470° lat, 49.490° lon, 0 m alt [S, X]
#   Accra: 5.600° lat, -0.300° lon, 0 m alt [L, S, X, Ka]

List KSAT stations only:

brahe datasets groundstations list-stations --provider ksat
Output:
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# KSAT Groundstations (36 total):
#   Athens: 37.850° lat, 22.620° lon, 0 m alt [S, X, Optical]
#   Awarua: -46.530° lat, 168.380° lon, 0 m alt [S, X, Ka]



See Also