ISS location discrepancy

[ulugeyik]

I am using the example in the phase 2 guide to get the current ISS location on the flightOS. Here is the simplified code:

Code: Select all

from orbit import ISS #to find where ISS is.
point = ISS.coordinates()
print(point.latitude.degrees)
print(point.longitude.degrees)

However, when I compare these to any of the online trackers (ESA, NASA etc) , for example https://www.astroviewer.net/iss/en/, it is off by many degrees. Mostly getting the hemisphere right.

If do the same on another computer (Ubuntu), it works just fine.

flightOS + the kit we have received does not keep time well. I manually change the time on the shell so I think this is the culprit. I can not detect any difference when I stare at the output of the "date" command though.

I would like to avoid this issue when our team's programme runs on the ISS. I suppose it should be a problem but is there a "fool proof" way of doing this?

[gordon77]

Is the time correct on your pi ?

[ulugeyik]

Yes, the date, time and timezone are correct. However, I had to do it manually. It is not picking it up from NTP servers,

[raulconm]

I do agree, there is always an important difference between the lat and long in the web trackers and the data obtained by the ISS.at() function. I'm going to investigate it. Please, share with us for findings, I'll do the same. Thank you.

Raul