OrbTrak Pass Predictions Installation PredictLib Acknowledgements
Location: Go!

Real-time Satellite Tracking on the Web

OrbTrak is a Web Widget (JavaScript library) that you can add to your own pages to chart upcoming passes of man-made satellites, as well as view their positions in real time.

Once the widget is loaded, no further trips to the server are necessary since all calculations are performed on the client.

Best of all, OrbTrak is free!

The above demo shows a few of the brightest and most interesting satellites.

International Space Station ENVISAT Genesis II TRMM
  1. The International Space Station (and Zarya module).
  2. ENVISAT, an Earth observation satellite.
  3. Genesis II, an experimental space habitat.
  4. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Satellite.

The following are visible satellite passes over your location for the next 24 hours.

  • Please note that visibility can be affected by weather and other factors and is not guaranteed.
  • Passes are considered visible when the ground station is in darkness and the satellite is not eclipsed by the Earth.
  • Azimuth and range are given for rise, peak, and decay times.

Installation and Usage

Components are packaged separately and can be downloaded here:

  • Download OrbTrak and extract the files to a location on your Web server.
  • Download PredictLib and extract the files to the same directory. OrbTrak uses PredictLib to perform its calculations.
  • Download images to use with OrbTrak. Create a subdirectory named "orbimages" and extract the archive there. See license.txt for licensing terms.
  • The following example demonstrates the use of the library:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
	<title>OrbTrak Example</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="orbtrak.css" />
	<script src="predictlib.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
	<script src="tle.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
	<script src="orbtrak.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
	<script type="text/javascript">
		function load()
		{
			// Pass in latitude and longitude of the ground station (your location).
			Orb.startTracking(document.getElementById('map'), 43.154, -77.615);
			Orb.generateTable(document.getElementById('passes'));
		}
	</script>
</head>
<body onload="load()">
	<div id="map" style="width: 540px; height: 270px;"></div>
	<div id="passes"></div>
</body>
</html>
PredictLib

PredictLib is a JavaScript library based on the open-source C program PREDICT, by John A. Magliacane. It was ported from the DOS version, and has been modified to output tracking and prediction data suitable for OrbTrak. If you wish to modify or distribute PredictLib yourself, you may do so under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict

Copyright © 2008 Andrew T. West. This site does not endorse, nor is it endorsed by any of the entities named here.

Geolocation Copyright © 2008 MaxMind, Inc.
ISS image in the OrbTrak Logo and images of ISS, ENVISAT, and TRMM satellites courtesy of NASA.
Genesis II image Copyright © Bigelow Aerospace.
Globe image in the PredictLib Logo courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory.
House icon Copyright © Everaldo Coelho. Available under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Satellite icon Copyright © 2007 Olivier Charavel. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
google-code-prettify Copyright © 2006 Google Inc. Available under the Apache License, Version 2.0