juliensimon/starlink-tle-latest

Latest Starlink & GPS TLEs

Credit: NASA

Part of the Orbital Mechanics Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Latest Two-Line Element (TLE) orbital data for the Starlink and GPS constellations, sourced daily from CelesTrak.

Two-Line Element sets (TLEs) are the standard format for representing satellite orbital elements, developed by NORAD in the 1960s and still used universally today. Each TLE encodes six Keplerian orbital elements plus drag terms in a compact two-line ASCII format designed for use with the SGP4/SDP4 analytical propagation model.

This dataset provides daily-fresh TLEs for two critical constellations. The Starlink TLEs enable tracking of the largest object population in LEO -- essential for conjunction screening, RF interference analysis, and constellation operations research. The GPS TLEs cover the NAVSTAR constellation in MEO, which serves as the backbone of the Global Positioning System.

Raw .tle files are provided alongside Parquet for maximum compatibility: orbit propagation libraries like python-sgp4, orekit, and STK consume the standard three-line TLE format directly. Because TLE accuracy degrades rapidly with time (especially for LEO objects experiencing variable atmospheric drag), daily updates are essential.

Raw TLE files

• data/starlink.tle -- raw TLE text
• data/gps.tle -- raw TLE text

Schema (Parquet)

Column	Type	Description
name	--	Satellite common name from the NORAD catalog (e.g., 'STARLINK-1234', 'NAVSTAR 78 (USA-326)')
line1	--	First line of the NORAD TLE format: contains NORAD catalog number, international designator, epoch, first and second derivatives of mean motion, BSTAR drag term, and element set number; parse with the sgp4 library
line2	--	Second line of the NORAD TLE format: contains inclination, RAAN, eccentricity, argument of perigee, mean anomaly, mean motion (rev/day), and revolution number at epoch; together with line1 fully defines the satellite's orbit for SGP4 propagation

Quick stats

• 10,681 Starlink satellites
• 32 GPS NAVSTAR satellites
• 10,713 total TLEs

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

# Starlink TLEs
ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/starlink-tle-latest", "starlink", split="train")

# GPS TLEs
ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/starlink-tle-latest", "gps", split="train")

# Use with sgp4 library
from sgp4.api import Satrec
sat = Satrec.twoline2rv(ds[0]["line1"], ds[0]["line2"])

# Compare constellation sizes with matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
sizes = {"Starlink": 10,681, "GPS": 32}
plt.bar(sizes.keys(), sizes.values())
plt.ylabel("Satellites")
plt.title("TLE Count by Constellation")
plt.show()

Data source

CelesTrak (Dr. T.S. Kelso), mirroring NORAD/18th Space Defense Squadron data.

Update schedule

Daily at 05:00 UTC via GitHub Actions.

Related datasets

• juliensimon/space-track-tle-history -- 238M historical TLEs (1959-present)
• juliensimon/starlink-fleet-data -- Daily Starlink constellation health snapshots
• juliensimon/space-track-satcat -- Full NORAD satellite catalog

Citation

@dataset{starlink_tle_latest,
  title = {Latest Starlink & GPS TLEs},
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/starlink-tle-latest},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0