OrbitDeck is a cross-platform desktop application for tracking artificial satellites and analysing their orbits. It is aimed primarily at amateur radio operators, although its extensive visualisation and planning tools are also useful to satellite observers and students.
The software combines maps, polar plots, timelines and a rotatable 3D globe with live look angles, pass predictions, Doppler calculations, illumination data and orbital analysis. It retrieves orbital elements from AMSAT and transmitter information from SatNOGS.
OrbitDeck can start offline using its bundled catalogue and coastline data, although fresh orbital elements are needed for accurate pass predictions. The companion OrbitTerm application provides access to the same orbital engine, configuration and cache from a terminal or SSH session.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Dashboard showing satellites currently overhead and upcoming passes for favourite satellites.
- Live azimuth, elevation, slant range, range rate, altitude and sub-point information.
- World map with ground tracks, coverage footprints, observer location and day/night terminator.
- Rotatable 3D globe with controls for inspecting past and future satellite positions.
- Polar sky plots, multi-satellite sky radar, pass overlays and coverage heatmaps.
- Seven-day pass predictions with minimum-elevation filters and quality scores.
- Doppler-corrected uplink and downlink frequencies, link budgets and tuning tables.
- Transponder selection together with support for manually entered transponders.
- Analysis of orbital history, ground tracks, illumination, eclipses, beta angles and orbital zones.
- Finds mutual visibility windows between two ground stations.
- Identifies sun and moon transits, conjunctions and satellite-to-satellite visibility.
- Planning tools for portable operations, workable grids, states and DXCC entities.
- Pass alarms for acquisition of signal, closest approach and loss of signal.
- Exports data in CSV, Excel, iCalendar, JSON and PDF formats.
- Pure-Python orbital engine and API that can be used without the graphical interface.
- OrbitTerm curses interface suitable for terminals, headless systems and SSH sessions.
- Linux builds for x86-64, AArch64 and Raspberry Pi systems.
- Deliberately focuses on tracking and analysis rather than radio CAT or antenna-rotator control.
Website: github.com/prstoetzer/OrbitDeck
Support:
Developer: Paul Stoetzer
License: MIT License
OrbitDeck is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
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|---|---|
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| SatDump | Generic satellite data processing software |
| PreviSat | Satellite tracking software for observing purposes |
| SaVi | Simulates satellite orbits and coverage, in two and three dimensions |
| tracker | Real-time satellite tracks and orbit prediction |
| TLEscope | Satellite visualization tool |
| strf | Satellite tracking toolkit for radio observations |
| Satellite | Displays GNSS information obtained from NMEA sources |
| Ground Station | Satellite monitoring and radio communication suite |
| TermTrack | Track satellites in your terminal |
| OrbVis | View and propagate the full CelesTrak satellite catalog in realtime |
| Flyby | Tracks and predicts passes of satellites in Earth orbit |
| SatIntel | OSINT tool for satellite reconnaissance |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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