Matt Amato at Analytical Graphics (AGI) has posted a KML file that allows users to use Google Earth to visualize the 13,000 space objects that USSTRATCOM tracks. The post was picked up today by SlashDot.
There’s an overwhelming amount of objects here that gives a good sense of the amount of sensors and satellites in orbit. It will be interesting to monitor this resource over the next five to ten years as the number of satellites is set to explode.
The feature that allows you to click on an individual satellite is very cool. It would be really interesting if you could query individual satellites or classes of satellites to know where they are, and to find out details about them. I’ve searched for some time for a comprehensive list of all of the earth observation satellites in orbit, and this data is definitely here in this data set, but there’s no easy way to get at it in aggregate.
