Public orbital elements
Each spacecraft is stored as mean motion, inclination, and a few orientation angles. Those numbers are enough to rebuild an ellipse around Earth.
Orbital CatalogThree.js · CelesTrak GP
Earth Satellite Tracker
Spin a 3D Earth and watch public spacecraft move on their real orbits — space stations, GPS, weather birds, and the Starlink shell if you choose to load it.
Starting WebGL and loading Earth satellite catalogs.
One more perspective
Keep exploring the scale
Every toy changes one assumption. Try another and see what moves.
From catalog to motion
What are we actually watching?
Time becomes position
Advancing mean anomaly along the ellipse puts every satellite at a point in inertial space. Convert to Earth-fixed coordinates and the continents stay still.
Shells, not dots
One satellite is a point. A constellation is a shell. Loading Starlink after the stations makes that difference visible in a few seconds.
Earth Satellite Tracker
How many satellites are flying over Earth right now?
Thousands of working spacecraft share the sky with Earth: space stations, GPS birds, weather observatories, and megaconstellations such as Starlink. This tracker plots public orbital elements on a 3D globe so you can see the shells, not just a list of names.
How to use the 3D satellite globe
- Start with the smaller catalogs — stations, bright objects, science, GNSS, and weather.
- Drag the globe, scroll to zoom, and click a point to inspect one orbit.
- Speed up the clock to watch a low-Earth pass finish in seconds.
- Turn on Starlink or OneWeb when you want the dense shells.
Where the satellite data comes from
Positions are propagated from CelesTrak's public GP catalogs — the same family of two-line orbital elements used by amateur trackers worldwide. The tool stores compact mean elements (period, inclination, eccentricity, and orientation) and animates a Keplerian orbit. That is accurate enough to see shells, ground tracks, and relative altitude; it is not a precision conjunction service.
Common Earth orbit classes
| Orbit class | Typical altitude | Period | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low Earth orbit | 160–2,000 km | 88–127 min | ISS, Starlink, Hubble, CubeSats |
| Medium Earth orbit | 2,000–35,786 km | 2–24 h | GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou |
| Geostationary orbit | 35,786 km | 23 h 56 min | GOES weather, many communications satellites |
| Polar / sun-synchronous | typically 600–800 km | ~90–100 min | Earth-observing and weather polar orbiters |
Why Starlink looks like a shell
A single Starlink satellite is a small LEO spacecraft. Together, thousands of them occupy a few preferred altitudes and inclinations. From outside Earth they read as a thin glowing envelope, which is why the catalog stays optional — the swarm is the point, but it can drown the stations and science missions.
Earth-fixed versus inertial
Earth-fixed keeps continents still so a satellite crawls over the map. Inertial holds the stars and orbits still while Earth turns underneath — the reference frame used to write the elements. Switch between them to see that both descriptions are the same motion.
Questions people ask about Earth satellites
How many satellites are orbiting Earth?
Tens of thousands of trackable objects orbit Earth, including working satellites, spent stages, and debris. Active constellations such as Starlink account for a large share of the newest objects. This tool loads curated public catalogs rather than every tracked piece of debris.
What is a satellite tracker?
A satellite tracker converts published orbital elements into a position at a chosen time and draws that position on a map or globe. This page uses CelesTrak GP catalogs and a Keplerian propagator to animate those positions in three dimensions.
How does Starlink look from space?
Individual Starlink satellites fly in low Earth orbit, typically a few hundred kilometres up. In bulk they occupy a few preferred shells of altitude and inclination, so a 3D view reads as a thin envelope around the planet rather than a random cloud.
Where does this satellite data come from?
The catalogs are collected from CelesTrak’s public GP (general perturbations) feeds, the modern JSON form of NORAD two-line element sets. The collect script in this repository refreshes those files; the page itself is static and needs no login.
Is this as accurate as a professional conjunction service?
No. The animation uses mean Keplerian elements for education. It is good enough to see period, inclination, altitude class, and ground track shape, but it is not a collision-avoidance or pointing product.
Why can I choose which satellite collections to load?
A full dump of every tracked object is large and visually noisy. Loading stations, GNSS, weather, or Starlink separately keeps the first view readable and lets you add the dense megaconstellations when you want that shell.
Orbital positions are educational Keplerian animations from CelesTrak public GP catalogs, not a precision tracking or conjunction service. Earth texture © Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0.