Monday, July 06, 2015

Live Tracking Thousands of Satellites


There are over a thousand operational satellites currently orbiting the Earth. There are over twice as many non-operational satellites. Stuff in Space has mapped them all.

You can search Stuff in Space by the name of a satellite. Select an individual satellite and you can view its orbital path and details about its altitude, velocity and its type. Zoom in on the map and it gets a little hypnotic watching all the satellites orbiting this virtual globe.


Orbital Objects is another WebGL Globe showing the position of active and inactive satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth. Active satellites are displayed in green, inactive satellites in grey and the red points show space debris.

The data for this map comes from November 29th, 2013. You can zoom in & out on the globe using your keyboard's up & down arrows.


Visualizing Meteorites across Spatial & Temporal Attributes is another neat example of a WebGL Globe. This globe shows meteorite collisions with the Earth by decade. You can select to view a decade using the timeline at the top of the page.

The mass of each meteorite is represented by the size of the cylindrical projection and the color of the projection indicates the meteorite type.

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