ABOUT RANDOM ORBIT
RESTFUL Services for Satellites

Using this site you can access satellite position information on almost any tracked satellite that is in orbit around the Earth. This is done by making requests to specific URLs (see examples on the right) and parsing the response. We also have a handy map interface so you can track satellites on the site.

This site was created during Science Hack Day, an event held in June 2010 at the Guardian offices in London. It is still very much under development but we thought we'd put it out for use anyway, in the spirit of hack day projects. It began as a small project on the Orbiting Frog blog, and was created in a hacky combo of Perl and PHP. Now it is growing into a full REST service as a Ruby on Rails application.

This site uses TLE tracking data, from the wonderful Celestrak site. We use these data, and the SGP4 algorithm, to calculate the location of given satellites at specified times. We are currently working on predicting human-eye visible passes at given points on the Earth.

UNDER DEVELOPMENT
  • Ben Smith is working on a way for you to chat to satellites via a Jabber client. This was a part of the original Science Hack Project. More info and links soon.
  • Iridium Flare predictions
  • Personal Twitter Updates
  • Mobile Satellite Tracking
  • Real-time satellite alerts
DEVELOPMENT TEAM
The Team Behind this Site
EXAMPLES
Live Orbital Tracking
XML Example

Locate satellites in real time
In this example, we get an XML file telling us the current location of the International Space Station (NORAD ID: 25544). This data can also be retrieved as a JSON or KML file by simply changing the '.xml' in the URL to the require file type. The ISS orbits the Earth roughly every hour and a half. The coordinates given are the latitude and longitude, in decimal degrees, and the altitude in kilometres.
Google Earth
KMZ Example

Data can be easily used in Google Earth
The example file is a KMZ download that can be opened in Google Earth. This file uses the KML response from this link to track the Envisat satellite (NORAD ID: 27386). Google Earth allows you to create 'Network Overlays' that regularly check for updated information from a URL, or file on the web. This can bundled into a KMZ file and shared.
Live Maps
Map Example

See satellites live on a map.
Here you can see that satellites can be tracked not only individually but also in groups. Celestrak categorises the TLE files it produces into logical sets. This example shows the complete set of Iridium satellites. These are a large network of commercial satellites that support Iridium satellite phones. The complete list of sets is available on the Celestrak website.