Datasets Commands
Download and query satellite ephemeris data, ground station information, and spherical harmonic gravity models.
Overview
The datasets command group provides access to: - CelesTrak - Satellite TLE (Two-Line Element) data - Ground Stations - Commercial ground station network databases - ICGEM - Spherical harmonic gravity models from the International Centre for Global Earth Models
CelesTrak Commands
celestrak download
Download satellite ephemeris data from CelesTrak and save to file.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets celestrak download <GROUP> <FILEPATH>
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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
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| ✓ Downloaded stations satellites to ~/satellite_data/stations.txt
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Download Starlink constellation:
| brahe datasets celestrak download --group starlink ~/satellite_data/starlink.txt
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| ✓ Downloaded stations satellites to ~/satellite_data/starlink.txt
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Download GPS satellites:
| brahe datasets celestrak download --group gps-ops ~/satellite_data/gps.txt
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| ✓ Downloaded stations satellites to ~/satellite_data/gps.txt
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See available groups:
| brahe datasets celestrak list-groups
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celestrak lookup
Look up a satellite by name and display its NORAD ID and TLE.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets celestrak lookup <NAME>
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Arguments: - NAME - Satellite name (partial match supported)
Examples:
Find ISS:
| brahe datasets celestrak lookup "ISS"
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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)'
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Find Hubble Space Telescope:
| brahe datasets celestrak lookup "HST"
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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'
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Find by partial name:
| brahe datasets celestrak lookup "CAPELLA"
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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)'
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celestrak show
Display TLE information and computed orbital parameters for a satellite.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets celestrak show <NORAD_ID>
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Arguments: - NORAD_ID - NORAD catalog ID (integer)
Examples:
Show ISS TLE and orbit info:
| brahe datasets celestrak show 25544 -s
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| # 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
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Show GPS satellite:
| # brahe datasets celestrak show 32260
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| # ╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
# │ 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 │
# ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
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celestrak list-groups
List commonly used CelesTrak satellite groups.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets celestrak list-groups
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Examples:
| brahe datasets celestrak list-groups
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| 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 │
└──────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
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celestrak search
Search for satellites by name pattern within a group.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets celestrak search <PATTERN> [OPTIONS]
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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"
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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)
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Search for GPS satellites in specific group:
| brahe datasets celestrak search "GPS II" --group gps-ops
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| # 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)
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Search with table output:
| brahe datasets celestrak search "CAPELLA" --group active --table
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| # ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┓
# ┃ 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 │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
# └────────────────────┴────────┴──────────────────────┴────────────┴──────────────┴───────────┴──────────┴─────────┴───────────┴───────────┴─────────┘
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ICGEM Commands
Browse, download, and refresh spherical harmonic gravity models from the ICGEM catalog. Downloads are cached under $BRAHE_CACHE/icgem/ and reused on subsequent invocations. Setting BRAHE_NETWORK_MODE=offline serves cached data without any request; see Environment Variables.
icgem list
List ICGEM gravity models for a given body (or for all known bodies).
Syntax:
| brahe datasets icgem list [OPTIONS]
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Options: - --body, -b <name> - Body name: earth, moon, mars, venus, ceres, all, or any custom celestial body in the ICGEM catalog. Default: earth. - --table, -t - Display results as a Rich table.
Examples:
List Earth models (default body):
| brahe datasets icgem list
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| # Earth EGM2008 degree=2190 year=2008
# Earth GGM05S degree=180 year=2014
# Earth JGM3 degree=70 year=1996
# ...
# 200+ model(s)
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List lunar models as a table:
| brahe datasets icgem list --body moon --table
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List models across all known bodies:
| brahe datasets icgem list --body all
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In --body all mode, an individual body's index failure is logged and the listing continues with the remaining bodies; in single-body mode the failure is surfaced as an error.
icgem download
Download a single .gfc gravity model file into the local cache.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets icgem download <NAME> [OPTIONS]
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Arguments: - NAME - Model name (e.g. EGM2008). Append -<DEGREE> to pin a specific variant, e.g. EGM2008-2190.
Options: - --body, -b <name> - Body name. Default: earth. --body all is not valid for download. - --output, -o <path> - In addition to caching, copy the file to this path. The command prints the resulting path on success.
Examples:
Cache the largest published variant of EGM2008:
| brahe datasets icgem download EGM2008
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| # /Users/.../.cache/brahe/icgem/models/earth/EGM2008-2190-<hash>.gfc
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Pin a specific degree:
| brahe datasets icgem download EGM2008-360
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Download a lunar model and also drop a copy beside your analysis:
| brahe datasets icgem download GRGM1200B --body moon --output ./gravity/moon.gfc
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If the requested name doesn't match any model for the body, the command prints a "did you mean…" hint listing the three nearest names by edit distance. If the name matches but the requested -DEGREE doesn't, it lists the available degree variants.
icgem refresh
Force-refresh one or both cached ICGEM index files, ignoring the 30-day TTL.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets icgem refresh [OPTIONS]
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Options: - --body, -b <name> - Refresh the listing for a single body. - --all - Refresh both the Earth (tom_longtime) and celestial (tom_celestial) index files.
Exactly one of --body or --all must be supplied.
Examples:
Refresh just the Earth index:
| brahe datasets icgem refresh --body earth
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| # Refreshed ICGEM index for body 'earth'.
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Refresh both index files in one call:
| brahe datasets icgem refresh --all
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| # Refreshed all ICGEM indexes.
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Reach for refresh when ICGEM has published a new model and you don't want to wait for the next normal cache miss to pick it up.
Ground Station Commands
groundstations list-providers
List available ground station providers.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets groundstations list-providers
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Examples:
| brahe datasets groundstations list-providers
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| # Available groundstation providers:
# - atlas
# - aws
# - ksat
# - leaf
# - ssc
# - viasat
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groundstations list-stations
List ground stations, optionally filtered by provider.
Syntax:
| brahe datasets groundstations list-stations [OPTIONS]
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Options: - --provider <name> - Filter by provider name
Examples:
List all ground stations:
| brahe datasets groundstations list-stations
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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]
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List KSAT stations only:
| brahe datasets groundstations list-stations --provider ksat
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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]
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See Also