Real satellites, live
This is not a simulation. It pulls live orbital elements for real communications satellites and propagates them with SGP4, the same model operators use, to show which birds are above the horizon at your chosen site this second, the angle to point an antenna at each one, and the round trip a signal would take.
What this is, honestly. The positions are real, computed live from public two-line elements published by CelesTrak and propagated with SGP4. GEO satellites sit nearly fixed in your sky, so they are either always up or never up from a given site; Iridium is in low orbit, so it rises and sets and shows real passes. What this is not: an operational ground segment. Reading a sky is free and needs no licence; actually transmitting needs an FCC/ITU spectrum grant, real antennas and a satellite you operate. This console shows the sky your future ground station would work against.
See the ground-segment stepsWhat you are seeing
Every number on this page is live. Nothing here is pre-recorded or staged. In three steps, here is what is in front of you.
The plot above shows where real communications satellites actually are over a ground station this second. Their positions are computed from live orbital data with SGP4, the same math flight controllers use.
The list underneath is not computed. Each row is a pass that a real antenna somewhere on Earth actually received minutes ago, decoded, and published on the open SatNOGS network for anyone to read.
The world map pins every one of those receiving stations at its real latitude and longitude, so you can see the global net of volunteers whose ears we are borrowing.
The edge, honestly. Listening to the sky and to the network is free and needs no licence, so this runs live for every visitor. Speaking back to a satellite is the hard part, and it is exactly what the roadmap is for.
Go outside and look
These are the brightest satellites in orbit, the ones you can see with no telescope. Each pass below happens when your sky is dark but the satellite, high up, is still in sunlight. That is when it shows up as a steady moving star. No blinking lights means it is not a plane.
How to read it: the direction is where it appears and where it fades. Peak is its height above the horizon in degrees; 90° is straight up, and your fist at arm's length is about 10°. Times are local to the place you picked. Predictions use real orbits from CelesTrak and can drift by a minute as orbits are updated, so step out a couple of minutes early.
Real signals, received now
The sky plot above is computed. This is not. Below are real passes received by real ground stations in the open SatNOGS network, decoded and published for anyone to read. It is the honest way software reaches past a gameboard: it cannot make radio waves without an antenna, but it can read what thousands of real antennas already heard.
Recent passes
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Telemetry decoded
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Link conditions
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Feed
Live
These are the raw radio recordings the stations uploaded. The hiss is the sky; the chirps and warbles rising out of it are the satellite. The picture under each one is the waterfall: time runs down, frequency runs across, and the bright trace is the signal drifting as the satellite rushes past (the Doppler shift).
Tip: use headphones. Recordings stream straight from SatNOGS and can be a few MB each.
Every number on this page comes from one of three public sources. All three are free, need no account, and are run by people other than us, so you can check any of it yourself.
The received passes and station locations: real recordings from volunteer ground stations worldwide.
The orbital elements (TLEs) behind every position in the sky plot, published from US Space Force tracking.
The live planetary K-index behind the link-conditions reading.
If a source stops answering, the page says so instead of showing old numbers as current.