Help: TLE data

[Kenneth Mankoff <mankoff(at)lasp.colorado.edu>]

Hi everyone,

I have a few months worth of TLEs (Two Line Element sets) from NASA. I
know that this data describes everything there is to know about an
orbiting craft, and i know what the different fields of each TLE refer to.

What I would like to do is plot the craft's position over the time-period
of the data that I have. Not just the altitude vs longitude or something
like that, but have an image (or time-lapse animation) of a globe, and the
craft moving around the globe. The only thing that would be unrealistic is
that I would have to magnify the body of the craft a bit so that it would
take up a few pixels around a globe that would fit on my monitor.

This is analogous to the solar-system simulator at JPL
(http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/), or the NASA J-Track3D page
(http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html). Of
course, what i am attempting to do is simpler, more specific, less robust,
one-time usage, etc.

I am wondering if anyone knows of any software (preferably IDL code) that
can help in this in any way, even just a small part of the problem.

Thanks,

Ken Mankoff.