Track NASA's Falling, 6.5-Ton Satellite In Real-Time

Originally posted by jrmcleod
Seriously guys,

Download Orbitron, its only a couple of megs in size and is in real time without the hassle of busy servers. You can see about 100 sats including UARS. Its fantastic and real time

And does that program take into account satellites which are falling out of orbit, encountering unpredictable atmospheric drag and tracking their position real-time? Or is it just a program designed to show normal satellite orbits, in which case it's totally useless for this.

Is there any Possibility of hiting India. I am just curious to know abt that.. the links given here are either busy or not showing the real time tracking only shows about the projected orbit

reply to post by jrmcleod


Downloaded it. Awesome program. Thanks!

Originally posted by jrmcleod
Seriously guys,

Download Orbitron, its only a couple of megs in size and is in real time without the hassle of busy servers. You can see about 100 sats including UARS. Its fantastic and real time

Very cool but.. How come Orbitron puts it out in the ocean passed South America and the Fox tracker still has it in the middle of South America?

The Fox page and Orbitron should be in sync. They are not. One or the other or both are wrong ?

Originally posted by Observer99

Originally posted by jrmcleod
Seriously guys,

Download Orbitron, its only a couple of megs in size and is in real time without the hassle of busy servers. You can see about 100 sats including UARS. Its fantastic and real time

And does that program take into account satellites which are falling out of orbit, encountering unpredictable atmospheric drag and tracking their position real-time? Or is it just a program designed to show normal satellite orbits, in which case it's totally useless for this.

it looks like it's tracking it in real time.. give it a try.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix

Originally posted by jrmcleod
Seriously guys,

Download Orbitron, its only a couple of megs in size and is in real time without the hassle of busy servers. You can see about 100 sats including UARS. Its fantastic and real time

Very cool but.. How come Orbitron puts it out in the ocean passed South America and the Fox tracker still has it in the middle of South America?

To me this indicates that Orbitron is not really tracking the satellite as it falls, or at least not doing so in an up-to-date fashion. I looked on the website for Orbitron and I didn't see anything specifically indicating that it could receive real up-to-the-minute satellite position info. A program like this wouldn't normally NEED any such thing, since satellites would normally have stable orbits. I see an ability for the program called an "internet tle updater", but even this seems to be generally used for things like daily updates, to correct the smallest variation in normal satellite orbits.

If you want to be sure, just run it while you have the internet plug disconnected. I'm betting it will keep giving you simulated info, calculated from orbital paths etc., which as I said are for satellites in normal operation, not in a state of atmospheric re-entry.

MAYBE if you had access to this up-to-the-minute TLE info and kept feeding it into the program...

Watching the satalite fall live "That looks like my house?...Wait a minute that is my... CRASH!!!!

reply to post by Observer99



I think your right.. I just unplugged my pc and I still had the info. Rats.. would have been sweet. A much better view than the Fox page.

ATS , I'm looking at a bunch of real time satellite tracking programs ( google search) perhaps we can find a better one that will work for us. help me search. Trying Gpredict and Nova for Windows now.

Oh well... I thought it was awesome. Now it's uninstalled. Not real time as others have indicated.

Another tracker. Use the pull down menu below the map to select UARS. The default is the ISS. This one loads fairly quickly.

satellite.tracks.free.fr...