AstRoBot updates orbital elements in spaceflight articles. It runs fortnightly, usually on a Saturday morning (UTC), updating articles which use a specific template, or a parameter set in Template:Infobox spaceflight(edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). Please see Template:Orbit for more information.
AstRoBot loads lists of pages linked from the {{Orbital launches by year}} templates, grabs the assessment level and page text of each article and creates a brief summary - class, length, infobox used, etc.
It is fairly straightforward to set the bot up for any article. Before doing so, it is strongly recommended that you notify other editors of your intention to set up automatic updates, either on the article's talk page, or the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page if several articles are affected. As a courtesy, please inform the bot's operator, WDGraham (talk·contribs), that pages have been added to the bot's run.
Only articles about individual spacecraft in Earth orbit are suitable for automatic updating.
Ensure the orbit_epoch field in the infobox is present and contains some kind of text, preferably an accurate epoch
Ensure the SATCAT field in the infobox is set correctly
Add auto=all, auto=general or auto=orbit or auto=none to the infobox
auto=general only updates the orbit count
auto=orbit updates all orbital parameters but not the orbit count
auto=all updates all orbital parameters and the orbit count
auto=none does not update the infobox
Add the fields you want updated to the infobox (the bot will update all the relevant fields it can find in the box)
Ensure no new references are present in any of the fields the bot is going to edit (i.e. "<ref>...</ref>") - calling existing references (e.g. "<ref name="..."/>") is fine. Old references should be moved to the article body or deleted as necessary, the bot will add its own.
(optional) Add {{Orbit}} templates to the body of the article if desired (see step 3 below)
The bot will edit {{Orbit}} templates in the body of the article regardless of which setting is used in the infobox
As long as the SATCAT, orbit_epoch and auto fields are set, the SATCAT and current epoch date can be read from the article, eliminating the need
Article body
IfTemplate:Infobox spaceflight(edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is not present you will need to configure a catalogue number and epoch date. If the infobox is present, check that it is set up (see above), and skip to step 3.
You must enter initial values manually; it is recommended that you use data from Heavens-Above for this purpose.
Add references
Use {{Orbit|ref|<ref name="heavens-above"/>}} - although if this reference is not already defined in the article, you will need to enter a full reference, using {{Cite web}} in the first instance of the template.
