Positions of Satellites Around Earth

[Erna]

I found this interesting blog post the other day showing you how you can view the satellites orbiting earth in real time with their names as well.

http://www.gearthblog.com/satellites.html

This collection by Analytic Graphics Inc. shows real-time (updated every 30 seconds) positions of 13,000 satellites around the Earth. The positions come from a government sponsored database which shows all satellites tracked in real-time. You get the idea that our near-earth space is getting kind of cluttered don't you?

You need to download a Google Earth plug-in to view the satellites on Google Earth (it's available at the same link).

It looks like this:

Without names:

With names:

If you zoom out a little, it looks like this:

I was a bit surprised to learn that we have 13 000 satellites orbiting earth. It certainly is cluttered out there! No wonder collisions occur!

 

[RyanX]

FWIW, it kind of looks like a swarm of mosquitoes. :/

That is an inordinate number of satellites though. You'd think with all the fireballs and other hits recently that occasionally one would get knocked out. Maybe there is enough redundancy where we wouldn't notice much of a difference anyways. Not that the media would tell us about such things...

 

[Erna]

[quote author=RyanX]
You'd think with all the fireballs and other hits recently that occasionally one would get knocked out.
[/quote]

That's what I thought as well. The space debris link on the same page is also quite an eye opener.

 

[Nienna]

So not only do we pollute the earth, we pollute space around the earth.