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Every Satellite Tracked In Realtime Via Google Earth
Matt Amato writes "With the recent discussion of the ISS having to dodge some space junk, many people's attention has once again focused on the amount of stuff in orbit around our planet. What many people don't know is that USSTRATCOM tracks and publishes a list of over 13,000 objects that they currently monitor, including active/retired satellites and debris. This data is meaningless to most people, but thanks to Analytical Graphics, it has now been made accessible free of charge to anyone with a copy of Google Earth. By grabbing the KMZ, you can not only view all objects tracked in real-time, but you can also click on them to get more information on the specific satellite, including viewing its orbit trajectory. It's an excellent educational tool for the space-curious. Disclaimer: I not only work for Analytical Graphics, but I'm the one that wrote this tool as a demo."
The title says "every", the summary says 13,000 objects. Is this really complete, or are there objects that are not tracked (or at least not disclosed)?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
From what I hear, it's a pretty nice company to work for. Too nice in fact. The guy who was my Best Man at my wedding works there. You guys really need to let him out more. He likes it too much, and his family and friends miss him.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Nige, well done.
How do I search for a specific satellite?
According to the Wikipedia article on Keyhole Markup Language, the following apps can read and understand it:
* ArcGIS Explorer .NET and Java
* Feature Manipulation Engine (FME)
* Flickr
* Google Earth
* Google Maps
* Google Mobile
* Live Search Maps
* Microsoft Virtual Earth
* Map My Ancestors
* Mapufacture
* Marble (KDE)
* OpenLayers
* Platial
* RouteBuddy for Mac
* WikiMapia
* World Wind
* Yahoo Pipes
* SuperMap iServer (SuperMap IS)
* OpenLAPI, an LGPL implementation of the Location API for Java ME
So, for those of you who don't have, or don't want to use, or can't use Google Earth, there are plenty of other options available.
But yes, it's pretty cool what you can do hey.
I wank in the shower.
"KMZ, you can not only view all objects tracked in real-time, but you can also click on them to get more information on the specific satellite, including viewing it's orbit trajectory. It's an excellent educational tool for the space-curious. "
Import this into the Iron Engine and you'll have a real education.
It seems like every couple months, Google Earth gains another feature that's been working for months or years in the X Planet program. Day/Night artwork, Satellite ephemeris, etc. I'm still waiting for cloud layer updates and I don't think there's a solar or lunar locator on it yet. The interactive nature of Google Earth is nicer than the command-line static image output of X Planet. The author of X Planet had a private script that would take three 120-degree views of radar-measured cloud data from various weather services and stitch them into a single spherical projection to be used in the graphics. He'd update it every 3 hours or so, and host the stitched version. I'm sure Google could arrange a similar process and host the image data in such a way as not to hammer the original servers nor the X Planet server.
[
Can someone please post a pic of what this looks like in Google Earth with the satellites?
Very nice.
And NASA's J-Track
There is also a plug-in for WorldWind.net.. but that is only 400 objects.. though it could be easily tweaked to show the 13,000 list as well I am sure.
Since the Reagan era, we don't reveal all of the orbits of everything we launch. It's not, of course, like the Russians don't know the orbits of these other satellites, but they are not in our lists.
And, any observation net can only track objects down to a certain size, probably in the few ounce range for 13,000 objects.
The subject sums it up, but I'm getting a little pissed at technology that is developed at NASA (World Wind) is just getting co-opted by Google (Google Earth) with no respect paid to the initial innovators.
J-Track 3D has been around for years doing this exact same function of plotting satellite trajectories including ground trace and additional information if you click on the satellite.
Just because you do it using Google doesn't mean that it's new, cool, innovative or news worthy.
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3d.html
There is also J-Track which on Windows, with its "active desktop" feature, can be set as your background/wallpaper to always be tracking weather and satellites.
So how long before this can be used to determine when spy satellites are/are not overhead and able to observe you? I would assume that with some basic armchair assumptions about the FOV and zoom capabilities of the satellites' cameras, one could project a cone onto a model representing the surface of the earth and determine the viewable area to each satellite (the existence of which and orbits of which are generally known by satellite buffs).
I've long wondered if something like this is already available to foreign intelligence operatives... it's long been said that say the Russians know exactly when US spy satellites are due to be overhead, and change their behaviour and camouflage anything they don't want seen in time for when the satellites pass overhead.
It raises some interesting issues with respect to national security, the war on drugs/terror/etc. However, given it's all based on public knowledge and you can't exactly outlaw math, I fail to see what the government could do about it.
Does Google then own the satellites, like they state in their EULA?
Thanks Google Earth, I just planned my next vacation.
What? I don't get it. Should we call in the GDI, or is this yet another useless meme tag?
Great company, great people, great products!
... and when you watch a bright night sky, populated just by stars and planets.. .. or a clear blue sky at midday, thinking about space, and the infinite....
Well.. think again. Somebody's ruined it already.
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As a foreigner (from Mars, infact), I thought Earth's orbit we ought to use as landfill, actually. Are you saying there's people living there??
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Very nice graphical swarm of debris/bees running around Earth. Good job!
Only issue I have with KMZ: there is so many, so fascinating, but no good search engine or cool, complete catalougue of them... Wait, let me call the copyrights office, quick!
Remember the days when you had to pay to get a picture of your house taken? Was that a rip? Or does google have enough money around to be able to offer the entire earth (almost) as a free service?
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I think the story might be a little misleading.
I suspect that not every object's info is made available, rather only the objects that USSTRATCOM deems appropriate for public consumption. Spy Sats, classified objects, and other items that they classify as not appropriate certainly doesn't show up in this KML.
Or do they? ;-)
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
I think some companies should just go clean up all the retired/inactive/disfunctional satellites or junk and recycle it! ;)
I would assume that with some basic armchair assumptions about the FOV and zoom capabilities of the satellites' cameras
Well the problem is that more modern satellite have supposedly more complicated Cassegrain assemblies making them able to shoot pictures at weird angles.
So although amateurs satellite watcher could very well help establish a precise map of all "über-secret"(*) military satellites *are* - inferring which part of the world are indeed visible and looked at is going to be slightly more complicated.
But civilian applications (knowing which of the official satellite is looking where) could be more easily done (since I haven't heard any of them to be designed to shoot picture at weird angles - and even then their characteristics could be obtained), thus helping privacy paranoid to hide their cat and exhibitionists to inflict their nude sunbaths to innocent Google Maps users.
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(*) - übergeheim for german geeks...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I know, it's a wow kind of thing.
But if you think about it a bit, an orbital path can be described by a very few numbers-- the angles to the equator and to Greenwich, and the minor and major radii. All else can be computed on the fly by about 8 lines of code.
Domo arigato Mr. Amato.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We should place in front of the ISS a thin, strong lightweight netting.
It could have a number of mass objects (weights) with thrusters to keep them apart. The net would span a few miles catching large debris. Clearing the path for the ISS.
When full, the netting would be closed. And towed to a lower orbit. And eventually burn up in the atmosphere.
Maybe the tagger is a non-obese diabetic mouse that has escaped from an animal intelligence boosting lab.
It was certainly a shocker when Google Earth loaded up the satellite data. I knew there was a lot of crap up there, but damn!
If I could make one suggestion, though, should you continue to develop this: Different icons for different classes of satellite? For instance, a greyed-out icon for inactive satellites, a booster for rocket leftovers, a chunk of rock for space debris, etc... I spent about a minute wondering why there were so many weather satellites over the US until I realized that most of them were just orbiting debris.
Awesome use of Google Earth, though!
I can't seem to find it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Its full of crap!
Also available in real time and which has been around a long time is Freefall from Advanced Analytic. It provides a lot more information and options and can also be used as your screensaver.
Go ahead and mod me OT, but it's Friday and I'm just pissed off to be the last person in the universe who knows the difference between a disclosure statement and a disclaimer.
"This is a cool new toy/tool/product I'm posting on Slashdot, and by the way, I not only work at the company that produces it, I wrote it" is a disclosure.
A disclaimer typically contains language such as "Not responsible for damages resulting from use, or inability to use, this product. Not even if it burns your house, steals your car, drinks your liquor from your old fruit jar, *and* steps on your blue suede shoes."
Disclosure statements are meant to inform the reader of, for example, a potential conflict of interest, and shield the discloser from potential liability (whether legal or just in terms of face) should the disclosure not be made.
Disclaimers are basically just weasel words intended to deny having any liability for, say, the quality or lack thereof, or some product. Or put another way, disclosure is taking responsibility (to some extent, at least, and not always), whereas disclaimers are solely intended to worm out of responsibility that the you probably have, at least morally if not legally. And maybe legally. Not all disclaimers will stand up in court. I wouldn't be surprised if most won't.
...and they're use's.
Patriot Games showed us that women can be identified in spy satellite photos from their, ahem, curves.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
I installed it and clicked off all objects except debris from the Chinese shootdown. That, my friends, is one massive debris cloud... Interesting how many parts are over the Antarctic...maybe that's just where that section of the cloud is passing through.
Impetuous! Homeric!
None more black.
and it is awesome. Everyone should see this.
This time it's SOOOOO obvious:
In sovjet russia, satellites track you!
Been using them for years to do sat watching.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST
Wow, this is very informative!
Work smarter, not harder, with gps tracking
I expected to be able to zoom out and see a conspicuous ring of communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit, but I didn't see what I expected. Am I missing something obvious? Or doesn't the zoom zoom out far enough?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I just gotta say, I love it when I can guess what goofy tags an article is gonna have just by reading the first sentence. PLANETES is a phenomenal show; a must-see for any astronautics/space geek; whether you consider yourself an anime fan or not. The premise of dealing with the serious problem of space debris is brilliant. Most important to me, it is one of the few space dramas that actually strives to get all the physics right; no sound in space, conservation of momentum, etc. I haven't seen anything that has come close to it since Kubrick's 2001.
Your comment made me think about this article posted a while ago about a material with the lowest reflectivity ever measured....
"the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened."
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
I don't know a whole lot about satellites, and this is nice, however what would be really useful information, and this info may or may not be available, would be when you click on a satellite, what the satellite does, as well as the country of origin, declination, etc. I would kind of like to know who owns the satellite, not just what country that company is in. I kind of feel like that is giving the wrong answer in that field.
It's only a matter of time before competence itself is deemed "terrorism".
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/12/182243
What happens when you combine searches that you don't even know about:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/08/1446256
the right to no-warrant search all e-maill:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/09/0239246
Warrantless GPS tracking (via beacons):
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/13/2218209
Considering any citizen who may capture evidence of abuse of authority to be a "threat"
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/15/1233238
or
"The Fox affiliate in the Twin Cities reports on a photographer who was handcuffed and detained for taking photos of police near the Minneapolis Police Department's special operations center. The police officer in the video admits that people are "absolutely" allowed to shoot photos on public property. "
http://www.photoattorney.com/2008/08/photography-not-allowed-14.html
(PhotoAttorney.com is fighting for your rights to record what is, including crimes committed against you by authority: if you accommodate robbery of rights by authority, you are responsible for your, and your children's helplessly being crushed-KNOW whats going on, ACT to pressure the robbers to limit them)
As of October, FBI's SOP is Warrantless Investigation:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/22/2054229
(note these are all from just the last couple of weeks, to understand how big the war for control of all rights, is)
Testing for Mad Cow disease (a Real Live Actual threat against our security+survival) blocked by gov't
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/30/238223
Protesting treated as terrorism, terrorized by police, without warrant or charges:
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/31/2140252
See a trend here??
Neighbors do the spying, become part of our western "stasi":
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/01/1144246
Gov't claims no one can share what the law is, because of copyright law
(remember "secret laws" in the soviet bloc? arrested and never found out why they were disappeared?
Never knowing why you are in jail? Never knowing what you were charged/convicted on?
How about our "security certificates", which do the exact same thing?
here's the "law is copyrighted: no share" story)
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/03/181251
France's electronic prison world:
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/08/09/05/0059220.shtml
and how to track all individuals from satellites based on gait:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/09/05/1157243.shtml
If you are naive enough to consider weaponry (electronic leverage is just another kind of leverage, steel was a previous leverage) to be something that isn't ALWAYS abused by authority, whenever it can, until the citizenry fights for rights enough to mitigate that, then your soul's going to not enjoy the rest of eternity, looks like.
What authority does with resources is shown also in what it DOESN'T do.
NON-prosecution of re
"Disclaimer: I not only work for Analytical Graphics, but I'm the one that wrote this tool as a demo."
That's not a disclaimer, that's a disclosure.
A disclaimer would be saying "I am not responsible" or "my employer may not agree with me".
-- All your bass are below two Hz
some satellites disappear, being shot down or put into an irregular orbit, as t.hey "didn't exist" to begin with?
Nasa's J-trac web app has been doing this for years.
Excellent tool, thanks! A suggestion, though. Break the monolithic satellite list into several checkboxed categories. For instance, I use Amateur Radio satellites on occasion, and it would be nice to have a selection for just active amateur radio sats. Similarly, I often observe visible sats at dusk, so a list of those would be nice. A list for weather sats, debris only, comm sats, etc would be nice.
BTW, you can get directions to a satellite's subpoint on the globe - that's funny.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
WOW!
Is there any way (using this sat tracking tool in Google Earth) to do a search for a particular satellite, and have Google Earth pan to that satellite's current position over Earth? I tried doing that using the "Fly To" search tool in Google Earth, but it did not work.