Continues after advertising
It’s easier to find out where SpaceX’s thousands of Starlink satellites are. Designer Will DePue created a new interactive map of satellites, revealing their position and movements around the Earth.
Produced with data from the Celestrak and Space-Track platforms, the new map shows satellite coverage in real time, also allowing you to rewind and advance their orbital speeds. Additionally, individual satellites can be highlighted by scrolling the mouse.
When you click on them, the screen displays information about the device and its orbital trajectory — the feature is useful if you want to check if any satellite will pass through your region, for example.
The menu on the left side of the screen displays data on the amount of data transmitted to Earth by satellites, also indicating the average time between launches. You can also check the dates of the last satellites launched and upcoming missions.
Furthermore, it is possible to find data on the number of satellites launched and how many of them are still in orbit. At the moment, more than 5,900 satellites have already been sent into space, but the website points out that only 5,601 are in operation.
This difference of hundreds of satellites is due to those deorbited for different reasons: some did not reach the desired orbits, and others re-entered after a solar storm changed the atmospheric density.
Continues after advertising
You can access it on the starlinkmap website.
Starlink satellites
SpaceX has been working on the Starlink satellite constellation to offer high-speed, low-latency internet to users around the world, including in rural and remote regions. The satellites last about five years, and the company plans to launch more than 40,000 of them.
However, satellites are of great concern to astronomers due to the impact they have on scientific observations. A study published in 2022 showed that Starlink left more than 5,000 light trails in the images of an instrument at the Palomar Observatory.
Continues after advertising
In response to the call from the scientific community, SpaceX announced in 2023 that it would change the design of the satellites so as to no longer harm astronomical observations and studies.
Source: Via: UniverseToday
