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SSC Web Services

The Satellite Situation Center (SSC) Web services allow a software developer to use portions of the SSC software in their own application.  If you are not a software developer and simply want to use the existing web interface to SSC, then return to the main SSCWeb page.

Description

SSC is a system to cast geocentric spacecraft location information into a framework of (empirical) geophysical regions and mappings of spacecraft locations along lines of the Earth's magnetic field. This capability is one key to mission science planning (both single missions and coordinated observations of multiple spacecraft with ground-based investigations) and to subsequent multi-mission data analysis.

If you are developing an application that requires satellite location data based upon updated, predictive and definitive ephemeris for the satellites maintained at the SSC, then the SSC Web services can be used to avoid developing and maintaining this data and software yourself.  The following describes how to utilize these services from your own application.

Software Development Kit (SDK)

The SSC Web services SDK consists of instructions and a library to allow a developer to utilize the SSC Web services.  The SDK is described here and may be downloaded here.

WSDL

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is an XML language for describing Web services.  The WSDL describing the SSC Web services is available at the following URL:

• http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/WS/ssc/jaxrpc?WSDL  Note: Depending upon your browser's XML capabilities and how it handles an XML file that doesn't contain any style information, you may need to use the browser's "view source" option to view the WSDL in the browser.  Recent versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla will have no problem displaying the WSDL.  Alternately, you may force the browser to save the WSDL file (target of link) and view it using another application.  The file should be viewable in a simple text editor.

The following lists other useful service description information:

• http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/WS/ssc/jaxrpc

Java^TM API

While the Web services are accessible from any language/run-time that support the Web services interface described by the above WSDL, the SSC Web services SDK contains a Java class library to simplify using the SSC Web services from a Java client.  The description of this API is included in the SDK download file but may also be viewed online at the following link:

• Description of Java API to SSC Web services

This library was developed using JAX-RPC and is included in the SDK described above.

SDK Download

The SSC Web services SDK may be downloaded from here.

Examples

The following are examples of client applications that utilize the SSC XML Web services.

• The SSC 3D Orbit Viewer application.
• Java example included in the SSC Web services SDK.
• An RSI IDL example of calling the SSC Web services from RSI IDL program.
• An example of calling the SSC Web services from JavaScript in an HTML page.
• An example of calling the SSC Web services from a Perl script.
• The Visual System for Browsing, Analysis, and Retrieval of Data (ViSBARD)