There are a lot more users using the API and that is awesome! As our community grows, I want to ensure everyone can make the most of our services efficiently.

Documentation and Best Practices

It is important to read the documentation and see if there is a more efficient way to accomplish your goals. Our comprehensive API documentation is available at https://api.keeptrack.space/v2/docs. The API provides several coordinate system options for satellite tracking, including ECI, ECF, LLA, RAE, and RA/Dec coordinates, each serving different use cases.

MATLAB Usage at Universities

In one recent case, I noticed a user using Matlab at a large Asian university to work on a project. First off, I fully support you and want to help, but you can download all of the TLEs using our bulk endpoints rather than polling each satellite individually. This approach will significantly reduce the bandwidth and CPU usage needed to get the data.

Data Access Methods

For projects requiring bulk data access, you have two primary options:

• Download all TLEs using https://api.keeptrack.space/v2/catalog/latest in text format
• Get complete satellite data using https://api.keeptrack.space/v2/sats

Computational Efficiency

While the API offers the ability to calculate the position of a satellite, it is always more efficient to download the orbital data and propagate the satellite on your side. This approach provides several benefits:

• Reduced API calls and bandwidth usage
• Lower latency for calculations
• Ability to work offline
• More control over the computational process

Looking Forward

Very excited to see more users using the API and I hope everyone is looking forward to it expanded rapidly now that Cloudflare enables multiple parallel users to use it.

Support and Feature Requests

If you have requests for new routes just send me an email at admin@keeptrack.space. I’m always interested in hearing how I can make the API more useful for our community.

Usage Terms

The KeepTrack API is provided as a free service under CC BY-NC 4.0 license. To ensure its continued availability:

• Please provide attribution when using API data
• Avoid unnecessary API requests
• Consider implementing efficient bulk data retrieval when possible

Remember, you can always check the API health and current status through our metrics endpoints, which provide real-time information about active satellites, payloads, and debris counts.