open-notify / Open-Notify-API

Source code for api.open-notify.org
http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/
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Is it just me or the ISS Pass Times API is giving incorrect predictions? #15

Closed dan-german closed 7 years ago

dan-german commented 7 years ago

When comparing the results of ISS Pass Times with the official nasa website Spot The Station, both the quantity per day, time and duration of pass times are off.

I've tried applying different coordinates for different locations, but nothing works.

MDStebel commented 7 years ago

Yes, it's way off. Nathan is aware and advised me that he's investigating.

dan-german commented 7 years ago

@MDStebel Got any updates? When can we expect it to be fixed?

MDStebel commented 7 years ago

@natronics please advise.

natronics commented 7 years ago

Okay, I think I got it.

The original problem was with the script that grabs new orbit data. It started (silently) failing while ago when NASA switched to HTTPS only for the resources. As time went on the stale data made the prediction worse and worse. I fixed that, but I thought the pass times were still wrong, however it turns out my testing tool was wrong (timezones)!

I've been checking against a couple of other sources and fixed my testing tool. So it looks like it's making correct predictions again (at least as well as I can manage, it's always plus/minus a couple of minutes because of orbit uncertainty)

MDStebel commented 7 years ago

Great! I'll let you know if I find any issues. Appreciate it! Thanks

On May 6, 2017, at 9:33 PM, Nathan Bergey notifications@github.com wrote:

Closed #15.

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