MSAFE files URL no longer valid

Orekit usage
1

Hi everyone,

It seems the MSAFE files URL (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files) in the orekit-data repository update script is no longer valid, I now get a 404 error.
The file for July 2023 in the orekit-data repository is empty, which seems to confirm that the problem is not just on my end.

I was able to find the file for september on this page, which links to https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sep2023f10-prd.txt, but I couldn’t find the previous files on the server. The naming convention has also changed (the _prd became -prd).

Does anyone know of another URL which still has the archive?

Cheers,
Clément

2

I just asked NASA about this. We will see their answer.

3

No answer from NASA yet, but I tracked down missing files, they seem to have switched back and forth between two URLS.
As you mentioned, the file names have changed. For compatibility with current Orekit version, I have renamed the september 2023 file to old version (with ‘_’), but changed the script so it will now download files with the new name. I have also made an update in Orekit for this: commit 0b675.
Another change was that the september file was published with old MAC line endings (i.e. CR instead of DOS CRLF or Unix LF); I have adapted the script so it converts to Unix line endings on the fly.
We will see what happens when the october file is published…

4

Hi Luc,

Thanks for the update ! I have just had another look at the website and found the page for the archived forecasts. I don’t know how I missed it the other day, it’s in big bright letters.

However it also has links to future files (which return a 404), so I guess the script should be able to check for that ? We’ll see what MSFC says.

Cheers,
Clément

5

Yes, the script checks the retrieved file. If we get a 404 page, it does not match the expected header, so we delete it and stop the retrieval loop.