MPC Submission Status¶

This tutorial provides information on how to use the Minor Planet Center's Submission Status API.¶

The Minor Planet Center's Submission Status service will return information on the status of an MPC data submission.

This can be useful if you previously submitted observations to the MPC, received a Submission-ID, and would now like to understand whether that submission has been ingested into the MPC's system, or whether it has been rejected (and if so, why).

• Further information on how to perform the precursor step of submitting observations to the MPC can be found in the following companion tutorial: https://docs.minorplanetcenter.net/tutorials/notebooks/mpc_tutorial_api_submission_submission.html

The Submission status API is a REST endpoint, therefore you can use your language of choice to send GET requests to the following URL:

https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status

In the examples below we use python code to query the api.

Further information and documentation concerning the Submission Status service and its associated api can be found at:

• https://docs.minorplanetcenter.net/mpc-ops-docs/apis/submission-status

Import Packages¶

Here we import the standard python packages need to call the api & interpret the returned data

In [1]:

import requests
import json

import requests import json

Submission Status Query¶

Your request must provide a JSON object payload containing the submission_id of interest.

E.g. {"submission_id": "2026-01-01T00:05:07.453_0000BhCE"}

Querying a successfully accepted submission¶

In the following example we see that the submission was accepted.

We see :

• "accepted": true, indicating that the submission was accepted
• "pipeline_entry_time": "2026-01-01T00:06:00.696565+00:00", indicating that pipeline orbit processing (e.g. orbit-fitting) started approximately 53 seconds after the time of the initial submission-ID.

In [2]:

# Call the api using the `requests` package 
response = requests.get(
    "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", 
    json= {"submission_id": "2026-01-01T00:05:07.453_0000BhCE"}
)

# Print the response, making use of the `json` package
sedna_json = response.json()
print(json.dumps(sedna_json, indent=4))

# Call the api using the `requests` package response = requests.get( "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", json= {"submission_id": "2026-01-01T00:05:07.453_0000BhCE"} ) # Print the response, making use of the `json` package sedna_json = response.json() print(json.dumps(sedna_json, indent=4))

{
    "accepted": true,
    "pipeline_entry_time": "2026-01-01T00:06:00.696565+00:00",
    "fault_events": []
}

Querying a successfully accepted submission with warnings (that did not prevent acceptance)¶

In the following two examples we see that the submission was accepted, but there is some warning content in the fault_events field.

In [3]:

# Loop over two examples of accepted submission with warnings that did *not* prevent acceptance
for submissionID in ["2025-11-12T18:44:08.601_0000Ba84", "2025-11-13T11:23:47.333_0000BaBf"]:
    
    print('-'*55, f"\nQuerying {submissionID=}")
    # Call the api using the `requests` package 
    response = requests.get(
        "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", 
        json= {"submission_id": "2025-11-12T18:44:08.601_0000Ba84"}
    )
    
    # Print the response, making use of the `json` package
    sedna_json = response.json()
    print(json.dumps(sedna_json, indent=4))

# Loop over two examples of accepted submission with warnings that did *not* prevent acceptance for submissionID in ["2025-11-12T18:44:08.601_0000Ba84", "2025-11-13T11:23:47.333_0000BaBf"]: print('-'*55, f"\nQuerying {submissionID=}") # Call the api using the `requests` package response = requests.get( "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", json= {"submission_id": "2025-11-12T18:44:08.601_0000Ba84"} ) # Print the response, making use of the `json` package sedna_json = response.json() print(json.dumps(sedna_json, indent=4))

------------------------------------------------------- 
Querying submissionID='2025-11-12T18:44:08.601_0000Ba84'
{
    "accepted": true,
    "pipeline_entry_time": "2025-11-12T19:13:24.148269+00:00",
    "fault_events": [
        {
            "message": "warning: name `WFST NEO Survey Group of PMO and USTC.` in header CON does not match MPC format",
            "phase": 2,
            "failure_code": 10
        },
        {
            "message": "warning: postprocessed name `WFST NEO Survey Group of PMO and USTC.` did not match regex `^([A-Z]\\.[- ]){0,6}[A-Z]\\. [-.'A-Za-z ]+$`",
            "phase": 2,
            "failure_code": 10
        }
    ]
}
------------------------------------------------------- 
Querying submissionID='2025-11-13T11:23:47.333_0000BaBf'
{
    "accepted": true,
    "pipeline_entry_time": "2025-11-12T19:13:24.148269+00:00",
    "fault_events": [
        {
            "message": "warning: name `WFST NEO Survey Group of PMO and USTC.` in header CON does not match MPC format",
            "phase": 2,
            "failure_code": 10
        },
        {
            "message": "warning: postprocessed name `WFST NEO Survey Group of PMO and USTC.` did not match regex `^([A-Z]\\.[- ]){0,6}[A-Z]\\. [-.'A-Za-z ]+$`",
            "phase": 2,
            "failure_code": 10
        }
    ]
}

Querying a failed submission with errors¶

In the following example we see that the submission was not accepted, with the fault_events field providing information on the failure reason(s).

In [4]:

# Call the api using the `requests` package 
response = requests.get(
    "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", 
    json= {"submission_id": "2025-11-12T21:11:49.579_0000Ba8V"}
)

# Print the response, making use of the `json` package
sedna_json = response.json()
print(json.dumps(sedna_json, indent=4))

# Call the api using the `requests` package response = requests.get( "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", json= {"submission_id": "2025-11-12T21:11:49.579_0000Ba8V"} ) # Print the response, making use of the `json` package sedna_json = response.json() print(json.dumps(sedna_json, indent=4))

{
    "accepted": false,
    "pipeline_entry_time": null,
    "fault_events": [
        {
            "message": "exact duplicate of submission 2025-11-12T21:09:16.359_0000Ba8U",
            "phase": 2,
            "failure_code": 5
        },
        {
            "message": "ingest failed",
            "phase": 2,
            "failure_code": 7
        }
    ]
}

Querying a non-existent submission¶

Here we demonstrate that if you try to query a submission-id that does not exist in the MPC system, the api will return a 404 error.

In [5]:

# Call the api using the `requests` package 
response = requests.get(
    "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", 
    json= {"submission_id": "2022-02-02T22:22:22.222_0000AaCC"}
)

# Print the response status_code
if response.status_code == 404: 
    print(f"The response status code was 404, indicating that the submission id was not found")

# Call the api using the `requests` package response = requests.get( "https://data.minorplanetcenter.net/api/submission-status", json= {"submission_id": "2022-02-02T22:22:22.222_0000AaCC"} ) # Print the response status_code if response.status_code == 404: print(f"The response status code was 404, indicating that the submission id was not found")

The response status code was 404, indicating that the submission id was not found