[HN Gopher] Low Earth Orbit Visualization
___________________________________________________________________
Low Earth Orbit Visualization
Author : aseidl
Score : 739 points
Date : 2022-10-14 16:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (platform.leolabs.space)
(TXT) w3m dump (platform.leolabs.space)
| martinky24 wrote:
| Neat. I wonder if this is solely generated from their array of
| distrbuted sensors, or if this is just another visualization tool
| using space-track.org's data.
| scanny wrote:
| Im on my phone but you could probably look in the network
| requests panel of your browsers developer tools to see if any
| request is sent to space-track.org.
|
| Side note: does anyone know of a good tool / app for looking at
| things like that on iOS ?
| beardyw wrote:
| No network activity. Seems like it might update occasionally.
| beardyw wrote:
| It does.
| martinky24 wrote:
| space-track has pretty aggressive rate limiting, so they'd
| probably download the catalog to their servers once a day or
| so and work off of that.
| tullianus wrote:
| It doesn't appear to include any objects in the GEO belt (which
| space-track does), so I'd guess it's just objects from
| LEOlabs's own sensors.
| everyone wrote:
| Already looks like Kessler syndrome.
| simlevesque wrote:
| Can someone fill me in quickly on what are "instruments"?
| detaro wrote:
| the radars collecting the information
| johnklos wrote:
| Scott Manley, unsurprisingly, did a nice video showing what it'd
| look like if you could see all the satellites and debris in space
| from the surface of Earth. It's scary how much stuff there is up
| there.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNGi-bt9NM
| simias wrote:
| Note that you have an option for a "Ground view" in TFA which
| lets you get a similar view, but real time and interactive.
| perilunar wrote:
| > It's scary how much stuff there is up there
|
| No more scary than the number of airplanes in the air at any
| given time, which is a similar order of magnitude.
| flightradar24 tracks around 200k flights per day -- there's
| probably ~10k-20k aircraft in the air at any time.
| jen_h wrote:
| True, but they can be methodically grounded if need be, and
| we've done it successfully before. We don't have any good
| playbooks for clearing space debris.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Not really. Even low Earth orbit is absolutely gigantic. It's
| considerably larger than the surface of the Earth after all.
| Scott Manley has the same issue that this website: for things
| to be seen, you need to magnify them extremely.
|
| Each dot here represents things at most meters large. Most are
| centimetres large especially if you look at debris. Yet each
| dot is the size of a large urban area on Earth. Do the same
| thing with planes or boats and the Earth will be close to
| painted a solid colour.
|
| Obviously, to size, you would see nothing from this distance
| which would be a lot less impressive, a lot less useful but a
| lot less scary.
| spoonfeeder006 wrote:
| Maybe better to show a probability density instead?
|
| I.e. the likelihood of hitting an object using a LEO view
| that is facing parallel to the earth's surface below the
| viewer
|
| The idea is that in every direction is a color map indicating
| probability of hitting an object if going straight in that
| direction to infinity, or till reaching earth's surface (for
| downward angles), assuming all the objects are frozen in time
|
| Not sure how to represent earth's surface though without
| fudging the color map colors, so maybe scratch that or use
| outlines to represent continents instead of surface color
|
| Its an idea maybe?
| schiffern wrote:
| >Obviously, to size would be less scary.
|
| I was expecting this, since it's probably the most common
| criticism of this type of visualization.
|
| Problem is, that analysis only looks at half the dataviz
| fidelity coin. It recognizes the (unavoidable) loss of
| fidelity in _size_ , but it ignores the (also unavoidable)
| loss of fidelity in _time._
|
| In the real world these objects do not remain orbiting Earth
| for a few minutes (ie the interval you're likely to look at
| this visualization). Instead, objects above ~800 km remain in
| Earth orbit for hundreds to thousands of years.[1]
|
| Mathematically this second inaccuracy tends to cancel out the
| first inaccuracy, therefore (presumably) making this "a lot
| more scary/impressive."
|
| Strangely I always see the criticism about size, but I never
| see the countervailing criticism about time. I suppose it's
| just like you said: the size factor is "obvious", but the
| time factor much less so.
|
| Eta: For some great visualizations of the space debris
| problem, I can heartily recommend this (slightly older) ESA
| video.[2] It's basically a full-length documentary crammed
| into 15 minutes.
|
| [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orbital_Debris_Li
| fet...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=13s&v=9cd0-4qOvb0
| rlt wrote:
| Maybe I'm optimistic, but I believe within a decade full
| and rapid reusability of launch vehicles, i.e. Starship (if
| successful), will radically change what is economical in
| space, to the point of collecting/deorbiting space debris.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > I was expecting this, since it's probably the most common
| criticism of this type of visualization. Problem is, that
| analysis only looks at half the dataviz fidelity coin. It
| recognizes the (unavoidable) loss of fidelity in size, but
| it ignores the (also unavoidable) loss of fidelity in time.
|
| It's a real time visualisation. There is no loss of
| fidelity in time.
|
| Noticing the important distortion in size is legitimate.
| It's not really a criticism by the way. It's simply that
| the impression of fullness inherent to this visualisation
| is misleading. Space is obviously mostly empty.
|
| > Instead, objects above ~800 km remain in Earth orbit for
| hundreds to thousands of years.[1]
|
| And satellites bellow 600km are only there for a couple of
| years and those bellow 500km a year top. Let's not forget
| that area scales with the square of radius.
|
| > Mathematically this second inaccuracy tends to cancel out
| the first inaccuracy, therefore (presumably) making this "a
| lot more scary/impressive."
|
| I'm guessing you mean we have to take into account the fact
| these objects orbit a long time when considering collisions
| but that's a separate issue entirely. The two don't cancel
| out at all mathematically in any meaningful way.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying debris are not an issue.
| The new deorbiting rules are definitely a good thing.
| schiffern wrote:
| >It's a real time visualisation. There is no loss of
| fidelity in time.
|
| Unless you're going to spend multiple lifetimes watching
| it in "real time," there is _unavoidable_ loss of
| fidelity here.
|
| I don't mean fidelity in rate-of-time, but in duration-
| of-time. The total time available limits the duration
| fidelity, just as our eyeballs and screens limit the size
| fidelity.
|
| Again it's less _obvious_ (hence this confusion), but it
| 's no less unavoidable.
|
| >Noticing the important distortion in size is legitimate.
| It's not really a criticism by the way. It's simply...
| misleading.
|
| Extrapolating real-time events into long stretches of
| time is also demonstrably misleading to humans. See: the
| history of scientific discoveries in geology.
|
| Your point about "legitimacy" is right on. In data
| visualization the goal is finding the most useful (least
| misleading) transform of the data, not raw fidelity.
|
| It's just that, for the purposes of lifetime collision
| probability estimation, rate-of-time fidelity is more
| misleading than duration-of-time fidelity (since you
| can't have both!).
|
| >the fact these objects orbit a long time when
| considering collisions
|
| Bingo. The "scariness" comes from (where else?) the
| collision probability, and our estimate thereof.
|
| >The two don't cancel out at all mathematically in any
| meaningful way.
|
| I don't claim perfect cancellation with nothing left,
| just that it "tends" to cancel out (ie it pushes in the
| opposite direction), and that this factor was being
| ignored.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Unless you're going to spend multiple lifetimes
| watching it in "real time," there is unavoidable loss of
| fidelity here.
|
| I don't understand this argument at all. As stated
| previously, it's a real time visualization, thus there is
| trivially no loss of fidelity in time. To claim that is
| like claiming that a live web cam of a city street has a
| loss in fidelity because it doesn't show what the street
| will look like in 100 years.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Your point about "legitimacy" is right on. In data
| visualization the goal is finding the most useful (least
| misleading) transform of the data, not raw fidelity.
|
| I made no point about legitimacy. The fact remains. It is
| a real time visualisation. It's interesting to consider
| what's currently flying above. It's not a collision
| estimation tool.
|
| > Bingo. The "scariness" comes from (where else?) the
| collision probability, and our estimate thereof.
|
| There is nothing scary about the probability of collision
| however. Even when you take the very large safety margin
| the monitoring organisations like to take probability is
| very low.
| schiffern wrote:
| >It's not a collision estimation tool.
|
| Agreed, but then why did you say it gets less "scary"
| when you realize the size is exaggerated here?
|
| _What else could you be scared of_ , if you're not
| (implicitly) using the visualization to estimate
| collision probability?
|
| Some sort of thalassephobia for giant space objects,
| perhaps?
|
| >probability is very low
|
| Now keep rolling those dice every day for hundreds or
| thousands of years. Thousands of dice, for thousands of
| objects.
|
| People are historically bad at imagining that (just like
| we're bad at large distances), which is why compressing
| the duration is misleading.
|
| Risk = probability * cost. The cost of collisions (both
| the immediate cost and the long-term cost from additional
| debris generation) is very high.
|
| >There is nothing scary about the probability of
| collision
|
| If you watch the video I linked earlier, it explains how
| we're already past the "tipping point." Even if all
| launches cease (spoiler: they won't), the debris problem
| would continue to get worse.
|
| Maybe that isn't a scary situation to you, but it is to
| me.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > It's not a collision estimation tool.
|
| It's a comment about how full it is, not about how likely
| things are to collide and a reply to a previous comment.
|
| > Now keep rolling those dice every day for hundreds of
| years. Thousands of dice, for thousands of objects.
|
| Still low.
|
| Orbits between 700km and 800km are mostly lost after the
| past two decade antisatellites tests. Lower orbits clean
| fast especially the ones used by the recent large
| satellites fleet and space above 800km is mostly empty
| apart from the band with large USSR boosters which is
| easy to avoid.
|
| Risk is not very high. It is managed adequately and the
| legislation is properly anticipating current
| developments.
|
| It's important to remember that space is extremely large
| and we are talking about thousands of things. Having too
| much debris clustered in a small range of altitude makes
| it not economically viable to operate there but it
| doesn't prevent us from going through at all.
| schiffern wrote:
| >It's a comment about how full it is
|
| Why is that "scary," though?
|
| It's not like "running out of room" is a plausible risk.
| Kessler Syndrome limits you long before that.
|
| >Risk is not very high. It is managed adequately and the
| legislation is properly anticipating current developments
|
| See my edit to parent, and watch the video (especially
| the future simulations). The situation is far from
| "managed adequately" IMO.
|
| This has been fun, and I sense we're starting to go in
| circles (no pun intended). My upvotes, for being such a
| good sport. Cheers!
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Why is that "scary," though? It's not like "running out
| of room" is a plausible risk. Kessler Syndrome limits you
| long before that.
|
| Seems like we're going in circles here. Kessler syndrome
| is about collisions. But one can be concerned about the
| fullness of a medium without the risk of collisions being
| the primary concern. This is the case for everyday things
| like road traffic, restaurant lines, etc.
| mickdeek86 wrote:
| Does this mean the concerns about a Kessler event are greatly
| exaggerated?
| mlindner wrote:
| I'm not an expert but I would say I've spent a lot of time
| looking at this.
|
| I'd say the risk is exaggerated in some ways and not in
| other ways. Kessler syndrome is a real effect but it's also
| not something that happens suddenly when some threshold is
| reached. It comes from statistics and generally assumes
| that no preventative action is taken when satellites are
| destined to collide with each other. It also assumes no
| attempts to clean up debris happens. Both of which are not
| the case in general. Many countries have rules that say
| that satellites cannot be left in orbit after end of
| mission (in the US for example that is currently 25 years,
| and there is effort right now to reduce that to 5 years).
| This kind of cuts the effects of kessler syndrome short.
|
| Further, Kessler syndrome is different for different
| altitudes. People keep talking about it with respect to
| Starlink, but at the altitudes where the Starlink
| satellites orbit, because of atmospheric drag, debris don't
| last longer than a decade or so so. This means there isn't
| enough time for that statistical effect to build up and
| destroy most satellites, at least at current satellite
| densities.
|
| There's also the argument that kessler syndrome has in fact
| already begun. As mentioned, it's a statistical effect that
| happens over time. Imagine the slowest burning smoldering
| campfire that takes decades or centuries to burn through
| it's fuel.
|
| In short, I feel like current plans to reduce the allowed
| maximum debris lifetimes by some countries (as long as we
| can get all major space launch countries to agree) will
| largely make the kessler syndrome not really a risk.
| cwillu wrote:
| You're kinda asking if a number is too big, without saying
| which number you're asking about.
| mickdeek86 wrote:
| I'm asking whether Kessler syndrome is something we
| should be worried about
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| No, not until the density of objects in LEO is _much_
| higher IMO
| fortysixdegrees wrote:
| What tech is powering this?
|
| Is it unity or Godot or something?
| spaceman33 wrote:
| Webgl via Three.js
| kylethorne wrote:
| Why does New Zealand have so many beams? All of Australia has
| zero for comparison.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Amazing that each piece of debris is ID'd and tracked.
| MR4D wrote:
| The fact that I can view LEO objects in real-time on a phone just
| shows how awesome technology has become.
|
| Even 10 years ago, that thought would have been ludicrous.
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| This is really nice made and shows how crowded the LEO space is
| outworlder wrote:
| Or _not_ crowded.
|
| We have more boats and planes than there are orbital objects.
| If you open flightradar you'll see an absolute abomination of
| planes flying overhead. Yet, unless you live close to an
| airport, you probably won't see any. The planet is really
| large. Space is larger still.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Not sure why this is downvoted. Space is really, really big
| (the name fits!). The biggest Earth-orbiting satellites are a
| bit less than the size of a school bus (the biggest being
| something like KH-9 size) in terms of mass, somewhat bigger
| when it comes to things like parabolic dishes.
|
| We worry about orbital debris because of the consequence of
| loss. There's a lot of room up there (not discounting
| everyone's concern).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The "Unknown" objects are literally UFOs
| rickreynoldssf wrote:
| That crashed my browser HARD. Needed a full reboot. Thanks for
| that!
| sosodev wrote:
| Which browser are you using? WebGL2 should be perfectly safe.
| The tab crashed for me once but Firefox just reloaded it
| without a hitch.
| iwillbenice wrote:
| Yeah, there's a lot of objects being rendered on screen. My GPU
| (3090 Ti) was running at about 41% while I was playing with the
| site. Amazing site, but definitely GPU intensive.
| sosodev wrote:
| Do you have a high refresh rate monitor? I only hit ~35% GPU
| usage with 1660ti but my browser is synced to 60 FPS.
| iwillbenice wrote:
| It is 100Hz refresh rate - so 100fps I imagine.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| My GPU - an Intel 4600 integrated GPU in a 2014 laptop -
| kicked up to about 95% utilization while playing with the
| site. I suspect I was getting fewer details than you - mine
| was not silky smooth but still perfectly usable, at what I'd
| estimate to be about 20 FPS.
|
| That your powerful GPU was putting in some effort while my
| poky GPU [edit: and my 2018 low-end Android phone, admittedly
| at ~4FPS] are still able to render the scene at all indicates
| to me that they put in some impressive effort to make the
| graphics scale for different configurations!
| pb7 wrote:
| This Safari tab is at 65% GPU utilization on M1 MBP. Can't
| quite tell what frame rate but appears visually silky smooth
| so guessing 60+.
| Tepix wrote:
| Just curious ;-) Whom are you thanking in particular? The web
| page authors? The browser programmers? The OS programmers?
| Perhaps the graphics driver programmers? HN? The OP? The
| readers of your comment?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Whoever is at fault. They are just putting the thanks out
| there. It is not their fault that those responsible have not
| equipped themselves with the proper receivers.
|
| It's like a bad API. The docs say to send, but there's no
| mechanism to receive. It's not the fault of the user.
| niix wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance, but how in the hell do we get other things
| into space with all of this in way?
| mlindner wrote:
| The displayed size is over 1000 times larger than they actually
| are.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| The satellites are not to scale, most are very small.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| The space station, apogee altitude 422 km, relies heavily on
| photon torpedos.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| Is there a way to set the time to 'now'?
| greyhair wrote:
| Does anyone know what the altitude scaling is on this?
| spaceman33 wrote:
| Should be scaled accurately in xyz, just the size of the
| objects is exaggerated.
| geenew wrote:
| This made me look up a link to my old favourite for this kind of
| thing, CelesTrak.org . Unfortunately, they discontinued their
| visualizer due to licensing problems.
|
| For posterity, this was the tutorial:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC90GyHMabk
|
| The announcement is here:
| https://twitter.com/CelesTrak/status/1547264390650527744
|
| For now, the person behind it's got a (informative) error message
| showing up: https://celestrak.com/cesium/orbit-viz.php
|
| He's asking for donations, might be worth it. It was a good tool.
| rzimmerman wrote:
| The ask comes from T.S. Kelso who is well regarded in the orbit
| tracking/space debris field. He's done a lot of important work
| making this information public and a lot of public good for
| collision avoidance. If it's important to you feel free to
| offer support! It's not clear to me he's asking for money,
| probably just help and time.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| "Oh my god it's full of junk"
| baron816 wrote:
| These kinds of visualizations give you the impression that LEO is
| much more crowded than it actually is.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| I feel like the "objects" aren't anywhere near being to scale.
| Pretty sure they should be MUCH MUCH smaller relative to the
| earth to be realistic.
| outworlder wrote:
| If they were, we wouldn't be able to see it in
| visualizations.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| I mean, you need to actually be able to see the objects for
| it to be a visualization though. If the satellites were drawn
| to scale they'd be smaller than a pixel.
|
| I think you can get a decent sense of how crowded (or not) an
| area is by watching how many objects pass though it. The
| state that I live in looks like it has somewhere between 1
| and 10 satellites above it at any given time, which drives
| home the point that LEO isn't quite as "busy" as it feels
| from a zoomed-out, sped-up view of the map.
| pc86 wrote:
| There's another comment saying that the ISS to scale at the
| default zoom would be roughly 1/150th of a pixel. It stands
| to reason that every satellite here is much, much smaller
| than that.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Right, because apart from the moon, all objects orbiting the
| earth are considerably smaller than the New York Metropolitan
| Area which would not be your understanding if you took the
| visualization to be a scale representation.
| pbmango wrote:
| This looks extremely crowded - but reminds me of how apparently
| hard it was to find or bump into another ship crossing even a
| confined sea like the Med before sonar. With three dimensions
| here and more avoidance planning, even this level of space
| probably looks _very_ empty still.
| Tepix wrote:
| It is of course not to scale. You simply couldn't see any
| satellites unless looking at ridiculously small areas. Most of
| them measure a few meters at best.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I'm impress by the number of objects (well mainly starlink)
| passing over my head every minute
| concordDance wrote:
| It's 25x time by default. Things are sped up a lot.
| barbazoo wrote:
| This is fascinating. Can someone point me to resources that
| explain Starlink's seemingly (but obviously not) random
| trajectories as well as their positions (some in a line, some on
| individual trajectories).
| modeless wrote:
| The ones all in a line are recently launched. They are launched
| ~50 at a time into a low orbit and use thrusters to raise
| themselves up over the course of a few weeks or months. During
| that process they are all lined up in a row which slowly
| lengthens over time. As they reach operational altitude they
| separate into groups and each group spaces itself evenly around
| one orbit for even coverage.
|
| For more detail than you ever wanted, check here:
| https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f5...
| Diederich wrote:
| I think this visualization makes it a little more clear what's
| going on with Starlink orbits: https://heavens-
| above.com/Starlink.aspx
| ubj wrote:
| Those long, straight-line convoys of Starlink satellites are
| fascinating. There's a few of them I could see scattered around
| the Earth. At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated
| orbits?
|
| Looking forward to using this website to try spotting satellites
| at night. There's something strangely thrilling about seeing
| objects in the night sky that were placed there by people.
| kidme5 wrote:
| Looks familiar...(!)
|
| https://youtu.be/fEkXTV69yo4?t=22s
| kaboomerizer wrote:
| >> https://youtu.be/fEkXTV69yo4?t=22s
|
| Holy S$#! I didn't know about that.
|
| Are there links between this Space Force project and
| Starlink?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It just shows what an orbiting satellite constellation
| looks like and why so many are required. That is the
| similarity
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Actually SpaceX IS working on what that video shows:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilit
| ies
| mlindner wrote:
| No, SpaceX is NOT working on space based interceptors, as
| your link clearly shows.
| mlindner wrote:
| How's this related?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It just shows what an orbiting satellite constellation
| looks like and why so many are required. That is the
| similarity
| mlindner wrote:
| > At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated
| orbits?
|
| It's not as easy to see as in this visualization, but Jonathan
| McDowell (https://twitter.com/planet4589) posts graphs on his
| website of each launch of starlink satellites as they raise
| orbits. https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html
|
| Scroll down to the individual launches and there's images you
| can click on of the orbit raising progress of each launch.
|
| Example of the Starlink 4-21 mission that launched on July 7th
| of this year: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/spl51.jpg
| (One satellite failed, which isn't that unusual, and will de-
| orbit probably sometime early next year if they don't recover
| it.)
| mncharity wrote:
| And the adjacent graphs show phase (line growing longer,
| spreading along an orbit), and plane (line breaking into
| multiple lines slotting into nearby orbits). Positioning is
| accomplished by spending time at different-than-deployed
| altitudes, mostly lower. Lower gives a difference in nodal
| precession (Earth being non-spherical), IIRC something
| vaguely like half a degree/day difference out of several
| deg/day, slowly changing plane westward. Thus plane changes
| take weeks of drifting. Launch being far more about "go fast
| (in some direction)" than "while being high", rapid plane
| change (direction change) would have prohibitive "launch-
| like" energy cost. So a single launch will populate one or
| few nearby planes. And finally lower orbits orbit faster,
| quickly overtaking deployed sats in a single plane to reach
| deployment positions. Kerbal Space Program is thought a fun
| way to play with such.
| bagels wrote:
| They don't break up in to unrelated orbits. They simply spread
| out along the same orbit by varying the period for a few weeks.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They do raise their orbit to 540-560km from what looks like
| ~350km launch orbit.
| modeless wrote:
| For spotting satellites at night, try my site:
| https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
|
| Most of the satellites shown on the Leolabs site are too dim to
| see without a telescope because they don't reflect enough
| light. My site calculates brightness and filters down to the
| ones that you can see with the unaided eye.
|
| There are still quite a few! ISS in particular is very bright
| and can even be seen before sunset. The new Chinese space
| station Tiangong is also a good one to try. In the next few
| weeks it's expected that the recently launched BlueWalker-3
| will become quite bright too as it expands its enormous phased
| array antenna (64 square meters!). But the coolest is probably
| if you can catch a recently launched Starlink train, 50
| satellites all visible simultaneously or within seconds of each
| other. (A few weeks after launch the Starlink satellites are no
| longer visible as they reach their operational orbits.)
| ubj wrote:
| Very nice! Thanks for sharing this--looking forward to using
| your website!
| spookyuser wrote:
| I love you saw a train a while back because of your site
| rebelde wrote:
| This site is great and is one of my favorites. I occasionally
| check it and set an alarm on my phone. I will announce to the
| people that I am with "satellites passing in 3 minutes", run
| outside and impress people. Great fun. Thank you, thank you,
| thank you!
| flavmartins wrote:
| Fantastic site!
| rmorey wrote:
| This is really well done, I will try it out tonight!
| [deleted]
| prazgaitis wrote:
| This site is really cool, and I love your blog post
| explaining how it works. Hats off, fantastic work!
| madacol wrote:
| post https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-
| tonight...
| club_tropical wrote:
| Very cool.
| eskaytwo wrote:
| That's awesome. We have a few upcoming for the southern
| hemisphere. Excited to see them!
| kubi07 wrote:
| I just watched Tiangong space station with my bare eyes.
| Beautiful. Looking forward to watch 14 starlink satellites
| tomorrow. Thank you so much for your website.
| [deleted]
| jlpom wrote:
| Your website is very well designed, thanks
| shallichange wrote:
| Thanks for your site! I used it with my kids during COVID
| lockdown to watch the ISS and other satellites. It's great
| justshowpost wrote:
| Forced to keep eyes at the floor (for your own good, of
| course)
| 101008 wrote:
| Wow. I allowed Chrome to know my location for the first time
| and Street View was in my front door. I thought it was going
| to use the IP but it's impossible to be that accurate, does
| it Chrome use my Home on my profile location or something
| like that?
| netrus wrote:
| The Street View cars log information about wifi access
| points, and use wifi data from your device to guess your
| location.
| CompuHacker wrote:
| That'd explain the changes to Location Services on
| Android over the past several years.
| milosmns wrote:
| Is it related to Android though? I read somewhere/thought
| that it is primarily the Google Maps cars recording WiFi
| data and not phones). Europe wouldn't be covered at all
| if it was coming from the phones, right? (GDPR)
|
| I mean, you can have a street full of iPhones - which I
| assume is a regular occurrence in USA, where people trust
| Apple - and still Google Maps on iPhone would guess well
| enough where you are. For example, I'm far away from the
| street and Google hasn't passed here recently, so my
| WiFi-based location is always way off (using Android). In
| my other home (and vacation home in another country) it's
| the opposite, because the cars have passed quite
| recently.
|
| The story checks out so far for me... but I am kinda lazy
| to search for the source on this right now, so pls share
| if you have it.
| jhugo wrote:
| > Europe wouldn't be covered at all if it was coming from
| the phones, right? (GDPR)
|
| Which part of GDPR would prevent Google from collecting
| pairs of (Wi-Fi BSSID, approx lat/lon), with the consent
| that you gave when you set up your Android phone, and
| using it for their own purpose without giving it to any
| third party?
| modeless wrote:
| I believe this data mainly comes from phones, not street
| view cars. There are about a million times more phones
| out there than street view cars, and they all have GPS
| and Wifi. Apple had this feature long before Apple Maps
| was a thing, and they didn't license Street View data
| from Google.
| Thorrez wrote:
| When you enable location, Chrome will send some pieces of
| information about your computer to Google Location Services
| to get your GPS location. Then Chrome sends that GPS
| location to the site you're visiting. Using information
| from your profile wouldn't be accurate if you were e.g. at
| a coffee shop.
|
| >The information that Chrome sends to Google Location
| Services may include:
|
| >The Wi-Fi routers closest to you
|
| >Cell IDs of the cell towers closest to you
|
| >The strength of your Wi-Fi or cell signal
|
| >The IP address that is currently assigned to your device
|
| https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/
|
| Disclosure: I work at Google but not on anything related to
| this.
| justshowpost wrote:
| This sounds like _I work for Schutzstaffel but just doing
| paperwork for them_
| [deleted]
| Kucher wrote:
| I have used your site to successfully spot Starlink trains
| and the ISS several times. It's very well-designed and the
| included street view overlay especially helps with knowing
| where in the sky to look.
|
| Thank you!
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Wow that's so big it's hard to visualize. Their website shows
| just how giant that is.
|
| Does this mean the US probably has satellites that can easily
| pick up cell signals anywhere in the world from space?
|
| https://ast-science.com/spacemobile-network/bluewalker-3/
| dirtyid wrote:
| The nightmode streetview is very cool.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| I can't tell if the times are for my timezone?
| modeless wrote:
| Times are displayed in the time zone your device's clock is
| set to. Unless you use the "Change Location" feature, in
| which case local time zone of the selected location will be
| used, with explicit time zone abbreviations shown.
| dwringer wrote:
| > At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated
| orbits?
|
| I can't speak with any authority, but in general a train of
| satellites would likely be moving in an orbit with either the
| apogee/perigee similar to the target orbits, but the other end
| of the orbit being higher or lower. Each time the train reaches
| the extremum at the target altitude, one of the satellites
| thrusts to adjust the other side of its orbit to target, which
| pushes it out of the pack.
|
| The specifics may be so different as to make that explanation
| totally wrong but it's probably not too far from the general
| principle.
| stvnbn wrote:
| Have you tried to look at the objects not placed by humans?
| club_tropical wrote:
| What's going on at the North pole?
| jawadch93 wrote:
| daveslash wrote:
| Previous Comment Threads:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24773462
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26309367
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _LeoLabs: Low Earth Orbit Visualization_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31413373 - May 2022 (3
| comments)
|
| _LeoLabs: low earth orbit visualization_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180865 - April 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Low Earth Orbit Visualization_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26309367 - March 2021 (93
| comments)
|
| _Monitoring a high risk conjunction between two large defunct
| objects in LEO_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24773462
| - Oct 2020 (150 comments)
|
| _Low Earth Orbit Visualization_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22165645 - Jan 2020 (1
| comment)
| social_quotient wrote:
| I wonder how much light is blocked by this stuff floating around?
| Seems like there are parallel efforts to make atmospheric dust
| while this is already up there.
| spaceman33 wrote:
| The satellites are drawn much larger than real life. It's
| negligible.
| noud wrote:
| I'm amazed how large satellites have become. They are larger than
| small countries, like Luxembourg, Cyprus, Trinidad, ... How do
| they get these huge satellites up in space? Unbelievable...
| spaceman33 wrote:
| If they were drawn actual size, the visualization would not be
| very interesting, you wouldn't be able to see anything.
| ezconnect wrote:
| Are the speed realtime? It seems they are really fast.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| I think if you set speed to 1, it's realtime.
| spaceman33 wrote:
| Setting the speed to 1 will make the clock tick at 1 second
| per second.
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| How is this built? Is this built on d3.js? This reminded me of
| old flash style plugins which we don't see any more.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| It's using Three.js[^1] with Photons[^2], and a number of other
| interesting libraries for calculation like satellite-js[^3].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/
|
| [2]: https://github.com/mkkellogg/Photons
|
| [3]: https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js
| centrinoblue wrote:
| This ux/navigation implementation is inspiring esp for mobile
| safari web browser. Intuitive and responsive, kudos to the
| devs
| sosodev wrote:
| I don't know which framework they're using, if any, but this is
| WebGL2. You can write fairly modern OpenGL code and run it in
| the browser. :)
| rainbringer2000 wrote:
| Damn that's impressive. Its hard to imagine being up that high
| fidla wrote:
| Doesn't work in Brave
| ck2 wrote:
| We need "Space Roombas"(tm)
|
| Starlink was first but what happens when a dozen companies
| eventually want to put up their own 10,000 low-orbit satellites?
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| Starlink follows the common solution of having them deorbit and
| burn up in the atmosphere at EOL. Competitors likely will do
| the same.
|
| Traffic management is an ongoing debate with the current
| solution simply being ground based tracking and orbit
| management.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Until your space roomba hits space debris going the opposite
| direction and becomes even more space debris
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| How would that work? A rocket launches into orbit an unmanned
| satellite capable of autonomously intercepting the orbit of
| debris in order to collect it and then deorbit itself? Seems
| extremely expensive for little benefit.
|
| It's my understanding that atmospheric drag and orbital
| perturbations due to the gravity of other celestial bodies
| cause satellites to need station keeping maneuvers just to
| avoid crashing into the Earth. So it seems to me that this
| debris problem will eventually take care of itself.
| NickC25 wrote:
| That's really cool. I know this comment is low-effort, but I
| don't really care - this type of real-time visualization is
| really interesting and I want to see more of this sort of thing
| going forward.
|
| That said, the blue dots are "unknown" - what could those
| possibly be? Not trying to be conspiratorial or anything, but is
| it some sort of debris from classified operations or foreign
| intelligence operations?
| tullianus wrote:
| Often you can figure out what spacecraft/rocket a piece of
| debris came from with a good catalogue of orbits and some math
| - these are labeled "Debris." Often you just can't - these are
| labeled "Unknown."
|
| The US Space Force does a lot of the object cataloging, and
| they _occasionally_ will pretend one of their classified
| satellites doesn 't exist, but there's only a handful of these.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > but there's only a handful of these.
|
| Huge if true.
| tullianus wrote:
| Oh, there are plenty of US satellites with classified
| payloads/missions; I just mean that most classified US
| satellites DO have orbital elements listed in the Space
| Force catalog.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I'd add that it would be pointless to try to hide a fair
| number of them, given that they approach the size of
| school buses (no joke -- the now-retired KH-9 was
| nicknamed "Big Bird" for good reason) and can be imaged
| on relatively consumer-ready optics. Some Russians made a
| nice stink a few years ago by using (IIRC) laser
| illumination to make some relatively high-res shots of
| American recce sats.
|
| The interesting aspects of them have to do with how far
| off-axis they can function. This was the major
| consequence of loss of the Morison leak of the KH-11
| shots of a Soviet carrier to Jane's Defense Weekly -- the
| image revealed how far off-axis it could image and some
| clues to how it processed imagery.
| bagels wrote:
| Often not in the public catalog though.
| maicro wrote:
| I only saw one blue dot while looking around (briefly on a
| laggy computer, so there are probably plenty of others):
| "L6188942", which you can isolate in the view by searching for
| it. https://www.n2yo.com/database/?id=81078#results shows there
| are no results for the "NORAD ID" for that same object.
|
| I don't have any domain knowledge here, so can't argue either
| way, but one possibility I can imagine is it's a place holder
| for "somebody launched something and we just don't have the
| records yet". No clue how realistic that is, and I'd trust my
| sibling comment's explanation more, but it wouldn't shock me if
| it takes time for info to propagate.
| [deleted]
| gtirloni wrote:
| Enable Debris and be shocked.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Most of those debris dots however aren't labeled; I wonder if
| they are actual debris.
| spaceman33 wrote:
| It's a simulation of the number of smaller pieces of debris,
| but not their specific orbits.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Try ground view with debris on.
|
| It looks like Asteroids after you've shot them into 10,000
| micro asteroids.
|
| Just needs a UFO going pew-pew...
| nerdponx wrote:
| I don't really know what I'm looking at here, but it feels very
| sci-fi and I'm into it.
|
| I also wonder, how do they track so many objects? Who actually
| tracks them? How much does it cost (energy, engineers) to
| maintain the tracking systems?
|
| Edit: Are these all _simulated_ orbits? Is there a big "orbit
| registry" somewhere? And what are the "beams"?
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| The US Air Force, for one, is responsible for tracking
| everything it sees. That generally means computing TLAs for
| each object. Whether they release this info, I don't know.
| evilotto wrote:
| Space Force.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Space_Defense_Squadron
| tullianus wrote:
| That capability was transferred to the Space Force recently.
| They make their data publicly available here:
| https://www.space-track.org/
| [deleted]
| tullianus wrote:
| LEOlabs operates its own radar systems that point upwards-ish.
| The "beams" you see are the fields of view of their radars.
| When an object crosses that field of view going at orbital
| speeds, LEOlabs tracks it and uses the partial trajectory
| information to figure out the orbit of the object. From there,
| it can potentially associate that object with existing objects
| in its own and other databases (the US Space Force, which
| operates its own radars, is one of the best-known).
|
| It then sells that information to spacecraft operators, who may
| be using the orbital information to determine if their
| spacecraft has a risk of hitting another object in space, or to
| figure out where their spacecraft are in the first place
| (usually when they're not talking to the ground).
| beardyw wrote:
| I am pretty certain they must be dead reckoning the location
| with occasional updates.
| mlindner wrote:
| That's how all space debris tracking works. Luckily orbits
| are rather predictable paths, but there's still atmospheric
| drag, lunar and solar gravity, non-uniform Earth gravity,
| solar photon pressure and measurement imprecision to deal
| with.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Is there a big orbit registry somewhere? Yes.
| https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx Each
| individual object is observed every few weeks, and then they
| estimate its current position with math and physics.
|
| How do they track them? With big expensive radar systems,
| mostly paid for by the military. It's an international
| collaboration.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_domain_awareness#Systems
| mlindner wrote:
| LEOlabs operates and pays for their own radars. They're a
| commercial company.
| jcims wrote:
| If the earth is 750 pixels wide in the default zoom, each pixel
| is 10mi/16km. Scale image of the ISS would be roughly 1/150th of
| a pixel.
| jcwayne wrote:
| Thank you for this. While the visualization is
| useful/interesting, it frustrates me how often similar visuals
| are used in news stories about space junk. Yes, it's a problem,
| but using visuals like this without proper explanation
| misrepresents it terribly.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It would be nice to have a selector for the scale level of
| the satellites, perhaps x1000, x100, x10 and x1.
| yazzku wrote:
| And perhaps a density map too.
| jve wrote:
| Yes, and they don't add footnotes. From visualization it
| looks like crash is inevitable. But yeah, otherwise there
| would be no visualization.
|
| Think about it: they say 19334 objects are tracked. Imagine
| that many cars or trucks in the world scattered all across.
| Then extrude that to couple hundreds of kilometers. Would
| that feel congested to you? 19334 new cars are being
| manufactured in less than 2,5 hours...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We do love car analogies. I adore them myself. But you did
| forget one thing. On the surface, a typical car is
| averaging something like 35 mph. A low earth orbit
| satellite around 7.8 kilometers per second.
|
| I otherwise totally agree with your point.
| oittaa wrote:
| And that's before you add oceans and horizontal planes...
| bagels wrote:
| Those news stories would be a lot less interesting with a
| black picture of space with a footnote that the satellites
| are there, just too small to see.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I would love to see a visualization comparing orbital
| traffic/debris with marine traffic.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| With orbital junk visualizations, relative size isn't that
| important. What matters is collision probability. Low polar
| sun-synchronous orbits where the remote sensing stuff
| typically lives are super crowded, especially at the poles;
| in contrast, GSO is a well kept orbit with low relative
| velocities, and the dead stuff drifts away, so it's really
| safe.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| They provide conjunctions as well. This is actually funded by
| DoD, they're not messing around.
| spacehunt wrote:
| I guess this is US only? The site is horribly broken upon
| loading. Only after using developer tools I discovered that all
| scripts and assets return 403 - CloudFront configured to block
| your country.
|
| Edit: I'm in Hong Kong.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Worked for me in the UK.
| xwdv wrote:
| Imagine a visualization of all debris and litter that's on the
| _ground_. Low Earth Orbit is very clean by comparison. This
| visualization makes it seem impassable and treacherous.
| hammock wrote:
| How do you launch a satellite without risking running into one of
| these things on the way up? Do you have to calculate the
| trajectories of all of them individually?
| iandanforth wrote:
| Yes. But luckily computers are fast and the spaces between each
| of those dots is (usually) pretty big.
| chroma wrote:
| Regarding launching and collisions: You mostly don't have to
| worry about it. The visualization makes space look crowded, but
| each satellite is over 150,000 times smaller than what is
| visualized. Space is very very big and very very empty. LEO is
| bigger than the surface of the earth and dozens of times
| thicker than the earth's crust.
|
| It only takes a few radar stations to track all the satellites,
| and the US Space Force makes their data public.[1][2] Most
| satellites don't have much in the way of maneuvering
| capabilities, so you don't need continuous tracking, just
| updates every few days or so.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...
|
| 2. https://www.space-track.org/documentation#api
| doikor wrote:
| Yes they do know the trajectories so you put yours in a one
| where it should not hit anything. Most modern satellites also
| have engines so they can move on their orbit to dodge stuff if
| needed. Also remember that space is 3 dimensional so you can be
| at the same exact "spot" on this map but still be few
| kilometers apart.
|
| Also this visualization is kind of misleading as it makes the
| satellites look way too big. In reality you could not even see
| them from even from the closest zoom available.
| Eduard wrote:
| There are so many Cosmos satellites
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Imagine if this was to scale and each of the satellites was a
| giant floating city the size of Tokyo or LA? I wonder how many
| centuries will pass before that becomes a reality.
|
| It's sort of interesting that there's been a wonky steam punk
| movie about battling cities roaming the Earth, gobbling each
| other up, but none about the more plausible future where there
| are battles between giant orbiting cities who pass their hated
| rivals once every certain number of years.
| rtanks wrote:
| This is truly fascinating.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| If you enter "1" for the visualization speed, is that the actual
| recorded velocities?
| spaceman33 wrote:
| Yes, setting it to 1 sets the simulation rate at 1 second per
| second.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I've played kerbal space program for over 500 hours and I can
| confirm LEO looks like this in my game.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's impressive but is your processor alright? PS4 Pro nearly
| catches fire trying to simulate one modular space station.
|
| Do you know if there's been any news on KSP2? At this point I'm
| not sure it will ever happen.
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