I need to know to which time the SMAP Satellite passes over a certain location in the future.
I believe this is called acquisition plan, but I'm not sure. Here for example the sentinel 1 acquisition plan.
I found this web page where you can track the actual position of SMAP and get a 10day prediction but I need a more official source.
As @gerrit pointed out, the Pytroll project has a couple of package which could be useful. To answer your question and get the next overpasses for the next twelve hours above a given location, you can use Pyorbital (https://github.com/pytroll/pyorbital):
from pyorbital.orbital import Orbital
from datetime import datetime
orb = Orbital("SMAP")
orb.get_next_passes(datetime.now(), length=12, lon=16, lat=55, alt=0.05)
with length in hours, lon and lat in degrees, alt in km. And this will display (at the time of writing this):
[(datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 13, 14, 54, 147587),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 13, 23, 23, 955297),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 13, 19, 8, 924860)),
(datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 14, 48, 41, 249324),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 15, 1, 24, 171709),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 14, 55, 1, 725148)),
(datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 16, 25, 14, 798347),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 16, 39, 0, 109628),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 16, 32, 5, 434271)),
(datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 18, 5, 14, 617775),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 18, 15, 43, 280401),
datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 24, 18, 10, 27, 671621))]
Each tuple is (rise, fall, highest point).
Now we also have the pytroll-schedule package, in case you need to make a full acquisition plan, that will allow you for example to put priorities on satellites: https://github.com/pytroll/pytroll-schedule
This is not a satellite acquisition plan, but it may be something to get you started. I've used the Python package Skyfield to get the subsatellite point of SMAP based on the most recent two line element set from Celestrak.
Please feel feel free to leave comments with questions if a tweak is needed!
I'm not an expert on dates and times in Python, the times object has several conversion and formatting methods if you want to make a table.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from skyfield.api import Topos, load
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# mostly from https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/earth-satellites.html
resource_satellites_url = 'https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/resource.txt'
resource_satellites = load.tle(resource_satellites_url)
SMAP = resource_satellites['SMAP']
print(SMAP)
print('epoch of the SMAP TLE found: ', SMAP.epoch.utc_jpl())
ts = load.timescale()
days = ts.now() - SMAP.epoch
print('{:.3f} days away from epoch'.format(days))
# still from that example:
bluffton = Topos('40.8939 N', '83.8917 W')
t0 = ts.utc(2020, 2, 23)
t1 = ts.utc(2020, 2, 24)
t, events = SMAP.find_events(bluffton, t0, t1, altitude_degrees=30.0)
for ti, event in zip(t, events):
name = ('rise above 30°', 'culminate', 'set below 30°')[event]
print(ti.utc_jpl(), name)
# WARNING I've hard coded a date here, if you run this later the TLE retrieved
# will be newer and so will be less accurate. You'd like the TLE you use to be within
# a few weeks (if not a few days) of your date for best accuracy.
minutes = range(24*60+1)
times = ts.utc(2020, 2, 24, 0, minutes, 0) # Example; every minute for 24-feb-2020
subsat_pts = SMAP.at(times).subpoint()
lat, lon = subsat_pts.latitude.degrees, subsat_pts.longitude.degrees
subsat_pts_now = SMAP.at(ts.now()).subpoint()
lat_now, lon_now = subsat_pts_now.latitude.degrees, subsat_pts_now.longitude.degrees
# fudging around to keep the plot from wrapping arond the Earth
breakpoints = lon[1:] - lon[:-1] > 10. # for SMAP this means that longitude has wrapped
lat, lon = lat[:-1], lon[:-1]
lon[breakpoints] = np.nan
if True:
plt.figure()
plt.plot(lon, lat)
plt.title('SMAP map every minute for 24-feb-2020, dot is for ts.now()')
plt.xlabel('longitude (degs)')
plt.ylabel('latitude (degs)')
plt.plot([lon_now], [lat_now], 'ok') # put a dot for right now
plt.show()
