[genewitch]

Ground Receiving Equipment, Telemetry, Tracking, & Control, and two line rlement sets. Apparently everything you need to predict orbits of a satellite are contained inside TLEs metadata and is considered a good way to share orbital information between disparate parties.

[bbor]

Heh, you actually highlight a funny frustration from my time there: TLES technically has a capital "S" too, but it's basically always discussed in the plural -- so I would very frequently forget to capitalize the "S" to the veterans' chagrin. Clearly, I haven't shaken the habit!

In hindsight, I guess it's the industry's fault for not pronouncing it "Tee Ell Eee Esses"...

EDIT: And I appreciate the explanation, personally! That's the best part of HN. To be clear to passers-by, a TLES is a string of characters that describes the orbit of a single satellite (artificial or otherwise) based on its position & momentum at some given start second. They have to be updated pretty frequently to account for gradual stochastic drift, which is both an interesting technical problem and a compelling philosophical metaphor.

[genewitch]

Sorry for explaining what the jargon in that comment was, i guess. i did typo "element" as "rlement", i guess i suck.