Real-world version of the Map View

[khyron42]

Sorry if this is a repeat.

I just remembered a site I\'d visited years ago, showing a interactive 3D view of everything NASA current admits to tracking in earth orbit. You can set it to update every so often to show the satellite positions in realtime as they orbit, just like our map view.

http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html/

Unfortunately it doesn\'t allow zooming out to see Lunar and other planet\'s orbits, but it\'s still fun. I know there are quite a few launches that had 'classified payloads' that don\'t show up on the list, but that\'s what you get when visiting the public tracking website ;D It\'s beautiful to zoom out to see the whole Geosynchrous band and then spin it slowly, looking at the ring of artificial moons we\'ve built for ourselves and the clutter in low earth orbit.

There\'s instructions on the page and the map view opens in a separate window, but the basics: left-click on one of the dots to see satellite name and orbit path, drag with left mouse button to rotate the view in 3D, shift-click zooms out, cntrl-click zooms in, menus at the top provide options. If you find a satellite you want to know more about, go to satellite, select, find it in the list, and click the sat info. button to display details in a new browser window. (the xxx R/B are discarded stages that are still in orbit.)

[deadshot462]

Cool link, also there is this one that shows all current NASA missions in our solar system at their live positions:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes/

[Radion]

Very nice indeed. I noticed something in the satellite list -

IRS-1D

If you\'re an American Taxpayer, this is very bad news, hehe.