Global traffic

Two sections counting what moves above our heads: aircraft in flight at the time of the reading, and the satellites occupying the geostationary belt. Each page gives the raw figures, the date of the reading and the name of the source.

These readings are provided for information only. They reflect what public observation networks see at the time of the request, not the entirety of traffic or of the catalogue.

Air traffic10regions observedAircraft in flight over Europe, Turkey, the Gulf, both United States coasts, Japan, South East Asia, Brazil, Southern Africa and Australia, plus state aircraft tracked worldwide.Source: adsb.lol, open receiver network, refreshed every minute Satellites in orbit35,786kilometres above the equatorThe geostationary belt, thirty-five thousand eight hundred kilometres above the equator: orbital period, apogee and perigee altitude, inclination, launch year and graveyard orbit.Source: CelesTrak, public orbital elements, refreshed every two hours

The sources

Aircraft positions come from adsb.lol, an open network of volunteer receivers picking up the ADS-B messages broadcast by the aircraft themselves. This network does not cover the planet evenly: a region with few receivers shows few aircraft, which does not mean the sky is empty there. The figures shown therefore count the aircraft seen by the network, and nothing else.

Orbital elements come from CelesTrak, which redistributes the public catalogue of objects in orbit. Period, altitude and inclination are recomputed from these elements using Kepler's laws: these are exact quantities, unlike an instantaneous position, which would require propagation and would age between two renders.

Both providers are called by our servers and their responses are cached: neither is called from your browser. Air traffic refreshes every minute, orbital elements every two hours, the latter being the rate CelesTrak requires.