MSAFE files URL no longer valid

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MSAFE files URL (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files) in the orekit-data repository update script is no longer valid, I now get a 404 error.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

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

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…

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

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.