Get the current ephemeris for a satellite

The current ephemeris in use by AWS Ground Station for a specific satellite can be retrieved by calling the GetSatellite or ListSatellites actions. Both of these methods will return metadata for the ephemeris currently in use. This ephemeris metadata is different for custom ephemerides uploaded to AWS Ground Station and for default ephemerides.

Default Ephemerides will only include source and epoch fields. The epoch is the epoch of the two-line element set that was pulled from Space-Track, and it is currently being used for computing the trajectory of the satellite.

A custom ephemeris will have a source value of "CUSTOMER_PROVIDED" and will include a unique identifier in the ephemerisId field. This unique identifier can be used to query for the ephemeris via the DescribeEphemeris action. An optional name field will be returned if the ephemeris was assigned a name during upload to AWS Ground Station via the CreateEphemeris action.

It is important to note that ephemerides are updated dynamically by AWS Ground Station so the returned data is only a snapshot of the ephemeris being used at the time of the call to the API.

Example GetSatellite return for a satellite using a default ephemeris

{
    "satelliteId": "e1cfe0c7-67f9-4d98-bad2-06dbfc2d14a2",
    "satelliteArn": "arn:aws:groundstation::111122223333:satellite/e1cfe0c7-67f9-4d98-bad2-06dbfc2d14a2",
    "noradSatelliteID": 12345,
    "groundStations": [
        "Example Ground Station 1", 
        "Example Ground Station 2"
    ],
    "currentEphemeris": {
        "source": "SPACE_TRACK",
        "epoch": 8888888888
    }
}

Example GetSatellite for a satellite using a custom ephemeris

{
      "satelliteId": "e1cfe0c7-67f9-4d98-bad2-06dbfc2d14a2",
      "satelliteArn": "arn:aws:groundstation::111122223333:satellite/e1cfe0c7-67f9-4d98-bad2-06dbfc2d14a2",
      "noradSatelliteID": 12345,
      "groundStations": [
          "Example Ground Station 1", 
          "Example Ground Station 2"
      ],
      "currentEphemeris": {
          "source": "CUSTOMER_PROVIDED",
          "ephemerisId": "e1cfe0c7-67f9-4d98-bad2-06dbfc2d14a2",
          "name": "My Ephemeris"
      }
  }