Real-Time Satellite Tracking
It's never been so easy to launch into space.
Deep Space Missions
Follow humanity’s return to the Moon with real-time tracking of Artemis II and future deep space missions.
Quality Space Data & Analysis
Sensor management, break-up analysis, and mission planning.
Education & Outreach
Explore orbits, constellations, and satellite systems hands-on.
Expert analysis, technical guides, and the latest developments in space domain awareness
Russia launched its first 16 operational Rassvet broadband satellites on March 23, 2026, beginning a long climb toward a 900-satellite LEO constellation. Built by Bureau 1440 and funded by billions in government and private capital, Rassvet is a technological sovereignty project driven by a hard lesson from the war in Ukraine. When your military depends on someone else's satellites, they can turn them off.
Falcon Heavy flew for the first time in eighteen months on April 29, 2026, expending its center core to push Viasat's final ViaSat-3 satellite toward geostationary orbit. The mission is a flagship rocket doing what only it can still do, for an operator betting six tons of high-throughput hardware on a market Starlink is rapidly redefining.
As of late April 2026, Amazon has 231 production satellites in orbit after eleven launches. The FCC license requires 1,618 by July 30. The math, the rockets, and what happens when the calendar runs out on a mega-constellation.
On May 4, 1989, Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from LC-39B carrying Magellan, NASA's first interplanetary mission since 1978. The eleven-year drought ended in a payload bay, and the radar that emerged would map ninety-eight percent of Venus through clouds that no camera could ever see through.
In-depth technical analysis and comprehensive guides for space professionals
On April 22, 2026, the FAA published a final rule implementing per-launch user fees for commercial space transportation — the first time the U.S. government has charged payload-based fees for rocket launches. Starting at 25 cents per pound with a $30,000 cap, the fees are modest today. By 2033, they won't be.
For nearly two decades, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force have been the world's unofficial civilian space traffic control system. The Department of Commerce's Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) is now taking over that job for commercial satellite operators - in stages, against persistent congressional pressure to kill the program, and with Department of Defense advocates pushing to make it happen before it is too late.
AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird constellation is a bet that raw aperture size wins. Each satellite unfolds a 64-square-meter phased-array antenna in orbit, the largest commercial antenna ever deployed. The company claims a stock smartphone on the ground can connect directly to it. The competition says the physics doesn't support that. Seventeen satellites in and a contract with AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone, somebody's math is wrong.
In 2024, China launched 68 orbital missions. In 2025, the number jumped to 97. In 2026, state media and Western analysts agree the target is 140 or more. Most of that growth is being driven by two state-backed mega-constellations, a half-dozen private launch companies hitting stride, and a deliberate national pivot toward commercial space. Beijing is no longer trying to catch SpaceX. It is trying to build an industrial base that outlasts one.
Community resources, mission coverage, and satellite tracking developments
Spot beams and frequency reuse turned geostationary satellites from one-way TV broadcasters into terabit-per-second pipes - and made consumer satellite broadband actually work.
Forty years ago today, a Delta 3914 lifted off Cape Canaveral with a weather satellite the country could not afford to lose. Seventy-one seconds later, its main engine cut off. Ninety-one seconds in, the range safety officer pressed his button. The third domino of a brutal 1986 had fallen.
The orbital regime where every GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou satellite quietly does the work of telling the world where it is - and where it is going.
Forty years ago today, Challenger lifted off LC-39A on a science mission that nobody outside Morton-Thiokol would call dangerous. Years later, after the orbiter and seven other astronauts were gone, investigators looked at the recovered boosters from STS-51B and realized the crew had come within a fraction of a second of dying first. This is the story of the launch that should have been a warning.
Concise updates on launches, orbital events, and breaking space news
Elon Musk moves to make himself unfireable at SpaceX as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon back a rival D2D joint venture challenging Starlink Mobile.
SpaceX's Starship Flight 12 debuts Ship 39 and Booster 19 on May 19, while York Space faces investor confusion as Space Force reorganizes the Space Development Agency.
SpaceX targets May 19 for Starship Flight 12 debut, while CRS-34 delivers 6,500 lbs of cargo to ISS aboard a Falcon 9.
ULA's Vulcan remains grounded after February in-flight GEM 63XL booster anomaly. Northrop Grumman completed successful static fire test, but investigation ongoing with no return-to-flight date.
SpaceX's Starship V3 targets Flight 12 with an unprecedented self-inspection maneuver, while Delta Air Lines walks away from Starlink inflight Wi-Fi.
Northrop Grumman's GEM 63XL solid rocket booster passed static fire testing, but ULA's investigation into a February 2026 Vulcan in-flight anomaly remains open. No RTF date set.
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