SatX is a desktop satellite tracker that visualises artificial satellites and space debris on an interactive 3D globe. It downloads public two-line element data and continuously calculates current orbital positions rather than receiving live telemetry from individual spacecraft.
Users can filter the catalogue by object type, search by name or NORAD identifier and inspect the satellites nearest to their location. Optional Starlink integration reads the pointing direction from a locally accessible dish and attempts to identify its serving satellite.
The application is built with Tauri, React, Three.js and satellite.js. It operates locally without a SatX cloud service, although an internet connection is needed to download the orbital catalogue.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Real-time visualisation of artificial satellites and orbital debris on a 3D globe.
- Tracks active satellites, space stations, rocket bodies and other catalogued objects.
- Drag-to-rotate globe with zoom controls and automatic centring on selected objects.
- Searches objects by satellite name or NORAD catalogue identifier.
- Filters for space stations, Starlink, navigation, weather, communications, scientific, amateur, military and debris objects.
- Optional observer-location marker stored locally on the device.
- Lists the 50 nearest satellites ordered by slant range from the observer.
- Optimised mode capable of displaying up to 16,000 objects.
- Optional full-catalogue mode for working with the complete downloaded dataset.
- Displays object name, NORAD identifier, orbit type, altitude, distance and available launch information.
- Pause and resume controls for the orbital-position simulation.
- Optional integration with Starlink dishes reachable on the local network.
- Matches the dish pointing direction against visible Starlink satellites above the horizon.
- Can display Starlink gateways and points of presence from a bundled public dataset.
- Keeps observer-location and Starlink dish information on the local system.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS and Windows.
Website: github.com/bbuckle1959/SatX
Support:
Developer: Barry Buckle
License: MIT License
SatX is written in TypeScript. Learn TypeScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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