Space Awareness: satellites and constellations
Search real satellites, design your own constellation, measure its coverage and screen it for collision risk on a 3D globe.
Open the Constellation Lab
Space Awareness has two views. Satellites and constellations is the lab with the globe and the map. Mission orbit viewer is for one spacecraft. A panel with six tabs sits beside the globe: Find, Design, Ground, Analyse, Risk and Scene.
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Find real satellites
On the Find tab, search by name, NORAD ID, designator or operator. Filter by object type, operator or country, orbit regime and status, or pick a constellation or mission group. Add one satellite, or add a whole group. Adding is limited to a number at a time, so narrow the filters or use a group for more.
Look at the globe
Click any satellite on the globe or the map to select it and draw its ground track and swath in white. Scroll or pinch to zoom and drag to pan. Use Show the whole world to reset the view.
Replay a satellite that came down
On the Find tab tick Satellites that have re-entered and choose one. Press Replay the last 2 days to watch its height fall, with a chart of the height above the Earth over the last days. The stage shows whether air drag is pulling it down, the air heats it and it glows, or it is breaking apart. Press Watch the burn for the glowing animation of the last minutes, and Follow the satellite to keep the camera on it.
Design your own constellation
On the Design tab choose a preset such as Iridium-like or GPS-like, or enter a Walker pattern: total satellites T, planes P and phasing F, with the altitude and inclination. You can also start from one of your mission designs or one of your Concurrent Engineering Design studies: the study gives the altitude, the number of satellites, the planes, the phasing, the size and the mass. Then press Add to scene or Replace scene. Orbits are propagated with J2 perturbations.
Add ground points
On the Ground tab enable ground stations or sensors, or add your own point with a name, a latitude between -90 and 90 and a longitude between -180 and 180. Set the minimum elevation for contact.
Measure the coverage
On the Analyse tab choose the simulation length and press Run coverage simulation. Cover is the share of time with at least one satellite above the minimum elevation. Passes are separate periods of contact. The tab also finds the best 3 or 6 satellites.
Screen for collision risk
The Risk tab works in three parts: 1. Debris environment, 2. Conjunction screening against all active satellites or the full catalog, and 3. Near miss analysis with the collision probability. Set the hard body radius and export the CSV of close approaches.
Replay time
The Scene tab lists the satellites you added and lets you remove them. Use Play, Reverse and Jump to date in UTC to replay the orbits, and the simulation speed to go faster.
- Under Design, the list of Concurrent engineering studies has an Add to scene button for each study. It puts the constellation of the study in the scene next to what is already there, so you can fly several missions and constellations at once. Click one of its satellites to see the 3D design of the study in a small view, lit by the real Sun for the simulated time.
- Presets whose name ends in like are Walker approximations of well known systems, not their exact operational phasing.