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Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

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Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#41

Post by pgalvin »

lnenad wrote: post #40
pgalvin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the Earth’s own radius dwarfs the height of LEO, so they’re actually roughly the same. There are other reasons we don’t currently experience major problems with collisions in space, and why airplanes sometimes do, but it is not this.

Respectfully disagree as you're comparing the surface to the size of the object, so it definitely matters. Here's some math: Average Earth diameter: 12742kms + 10km Average airplane surface area = 500m2 12752^2*pi = 510,865,389km2 Surface flight/plane = 1021730 planes Starlink orbit height = ~500km Surface at orbit = ~551,712,377 so ~8% increase (which is non-negligible) Average Starlink satellite surface area = ~7m2…

I believe the second half of your comment is exactly what I was getting at.

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#42

Post by xpct »

scrollop wrote: post #13

Why are there demarcations towards the poles where the satellite density drops off? Seems Norway, Sweden and Finland have a much lower density of satellites .

That's the first thing I noticed as well. Does that mean Africa and South America will have Starlink internet before Scandinavia?

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#43

Post by lnenad »

pgalvin wrote: post #41
lnenad wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully disagree as you're comparing the surface to the size of the object, so it definitely matters. Here's some math: Average Earth diameter: 12742kms + 10km Average airplane surface area = 500m2 12752^2*pi = 510,865,389km2 Surface flight/plane = 1021730 planes Starlink orbit height = ~500km Surface at orbit = ~551,712,377 so ~8% increase (which is non-negligible) Average Starlink satellite surface area = ~7m2…

I believe the second half of your comment is exactly what I was getting at.

Yes, I agree! But a 10% increase in surface area of LEO isn't small when compared to the size of the satellite, taking into account how the surface area at 10km compares to airplanes.

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#45

Post by jcims »

kklisura wrote: post #29

Just thinking out loud: given that we know positions of these satellites, is one able to use it for non-gps navigation? Either by using vision - by tracking or by using some electromagnetic specter - listening to satellites...

Yes

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/starlink-blocks-acce...

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#46

Post by philipwhiuk »

ultimoo wrote: post #7

are their orbits and trajectories computed ahead of time to avoid collisions?

Generally orbits are predicted many circumnavigations out, with manoeuvres being necessary to handle crossing paths and orbital decay from atmospheric drag.

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#47

Post by jcims »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #44

It's deeply misleading to mis-represent the size of satellites at this point.

Yeah if the lower 48 states (~2800 miles) span the width of my entire screen (2560px), each pixel represents just over a mile. The satellites at that level were rendered with dots that are ~3px or just over 3 miles/.1% of that width.

The Starlink v2 is 100ft on it's longest dimension. This means that the actual size of the satellite relative to the dot is on the same order of magnitude (.6%) as the dot is to the size of the US when it takes up my entire screen.

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#48

Post by vessenes »

sfblah wrote: post #25
Dig1t wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be illegal? There are virtually zero drawbacks and huge advantages to these satellites. They are not rendered to scale either, in reality they are minuscule compared to the amount of available space. There’s room for millions more spacecraft.

I think it's fair to classify the advantages as "modest" not "huge." Yes, it's cool that sailboats in the middle of the Pacific can get Internet, but the vast majority of Internet users are still connected via fiber or copper. And, arguably, the existence of Starlink could enable governments to cease the rollout of terrestrial Internet, which is a modest drawback to the technology. I've also seen reports that, as the…

As someone who worked and briefly lived in subsaharan Africa, I will say that the advantages are huge. Bandwidth alone isn't even the whole story - latency really matters too, another area where Starlink is super helpful compared to say, trying to get fiber punched in west from the southeastern parts of Africa. I have not yet mentioned the benefits of state actors not being able to cut your fiber at sea where nobody can see them.

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#49

Post by voidUpdate »

kortilla wrote: post #18
hn111 wrote: post #12

Half a year ago, I captured a photograph of a long train of satellites. However, when I navigate to that location using this tool, I don’t see any satellite train present at that specific timestamp. I wonder if there are other satellites not included in this dataset, or if I should search way further from the location on the map

A lot of the trackers miss the trains because trains occur within the first few orbits after a launch. So if they don’t start recording data until some delayed event, they miss it. I had this problem a lot with live night sky trackers not showing the trains despite me seeing them quite clearly.

It might also be taking the latest TLEs for satellites, I don't know if there's a database of historical TLEs, so it would only show the current orbit

Re: Satellite Tracker – Live Map of Starlink and 30k Satellites

#50

Post by ben_w »

lnenad wrote: post #40
pgalvin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the Earth’s own radius dwarfs the height of LEO, so they’re actually roughly the same. There are other reasons we don’t currently experience major problems with collisions in space, and why airplanes sometimes do, but it is not this.

Respectfully disagree as you're comparing the surface to the size of the object, so it definitely matters. Here's some math: Average Earth diameter: 12742kms + 10km Average airplane surface area = 500m2 12752^2*pi = 510,865,389km2 Surface flight/plane = 1021730 planes Starlink orbit height = ~500km Surface at orbit = ~551,712,377 so ~8% increase (which is non-negligible) Average Starlink satellite surface area = ~7m2…

I would argue that 8% is absolutely negligible; however one thing that isn't is that airspace is a narrow band vertically (12 km? Not sure exactly), while LEO is about 800 km thick (from about 200 km, because the Kármán line isn't good enough, to about 1000 km).

Conversely:

> Daily flights 50k-100k. Total number of satellites Those 20k satellites orbit roughly every 95 minutes, so they're doing ~15 orbits per day, and even the longest flights from conventional aircraft are about half that distance, so by distance each satellite in LEO is doing strictly more than the equivalent of 30 flights per day each.

Research I'm doing for a blog post has shown me that the exact position of a satellite is surprisingly variable compared to what you'd reasonably expect from a "Newtonian spherical Earth with a perfect vacuum" approximation of the orbits, enough so that it makes sense to treat 1 km as the "collision avoidance manoeuvres needed" threshold.

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