Live Demo on Hugging Face Spaces | Technical Documentation | User Guide

Real-time 3D Starlink satellite tracker and mission control dashboard. Track every satellite in the SpaceX Starlink constellation, monitor live dish telemetry, visualize ground stations, watch satellite handoffs, and predict inter-satellite laser link (ISL) routing — all computed from publicly available data. Includes a Stellarium-style night sky view with constellations and sun illumination modeling. Built with Next.js, React Three Fiber, and Three.js.

• ~10,000 Starlink satellites propagated in real time using SGP4 orbital mechanics across 5 orbital shells
• GPS constellation tracked alongside Starlink with hover identification
• Live dish telemetry from a real Starlink dish via gRPC (or demo mode with simulated data)
• Astronomically accurate Sun and Moon with real-time positioning, lens flare, and natural lunar phases
• Satellite handoff tracking — monitors when your dish switches between satellites
• Ground stations from FCC/international filings (loaded from HF dataset), with operational/planned status
• ISL routing prediction — models inter-satellite laser links with PoP-constrained gateway selection, line-of-sight checks, and per-gateway backhaul estimation
• Connection beam visualization from dish to connected satellite (cyan uplink, green ISL hops, orange downlink)
• Demo locations — 5 remote locations (Iceland Gap, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Celtic Sea) where ISL routing is mandatory
• Day/night globe with city lights on the dark side and atmospheric glow

• Horizon camera — 360-degree panoramic view from your dish location, drag from horizon to zenith
• ~500 reference stars with magnitude-based sizing, B-V color tinting, and named labels for the brightest
• 88 IAU constellations with stick-figure lines and labeled names
• Sun illumination model — cylindrical Earth shadow dims satellites in shadow to 10% brightness; sun-aware sky gradient transitions through day/twilight/night phases
• Satellite trajectory on hover — shows past (cyan) and future (yellow) orbital path arcs on the dome
• Tooltips on satellites (name, NORAD ID, az/el, shell, sunlit status) and stars (name, magnitude)
• Glow halo on the connected satellite, follows handovers in real time
• Sky HUD — sun elevation, satellite counts (sunlit/shadow), UTC time, daytime visibility warning
• Cardinal compass with tick marks every 10 degrees, bold at N/S/E/W

npm install
npm run dev

Opens at http://localhost:3000. If no Starlink dish is detected on the network, demo mode activates automatically with simulated telemetry.

The server connects to a Starlink dish via gRPC at 192.168.100.1:9200 (the standard Starlink router address). You must be on the Starlink network.

# Custom dish address
DISH_ADDRESS=192.168.100.1:9200 npm run dev

# Force demo mode (no dish required)
DEMO_MODE=true npm run dev

# Custom dish location (defaults to 48.910°N, 1.910°E)
NEXT_PUBLIC_DISH_LAT=37.7749 NEXT_PUBLIC_DISH_LON=-122.4194 npm run dev

server.ts                    Custom HTTP + WebSocket + Next.js server
├── gRPC client              Polls dish status (1s) and history (5s)
├── WebSocket server         Broadcasts telemetry to all browser clients
└── Next.js app              Serves the frontend

src/
├── components/
│   ├── scene/               3D scene (React Three Fiber)
│   │   ├── Globe            Earth with day/night textures
│   │   ├── SatellitePropagator  Headless SGP4 propagation (shared by both views)
│   │   ├── Satellites       Space view instanced mesh renderer
│   │   ├── SkyView          Sky view root (groups all sky components)
│   │   ├── sky/             Sky view components
│   │   │   ├── SkyDomeCamera     Stellarium-style horizon camera + OrbitControls
│   │   │   ├── SkyEnvironment    Ground plane, sky gradient, horizon ring, compass
│   │   │   ├── SkyGrid           Elevation circles, azimuth lines, cardinal labels
│   │   │   ├── SkyConstellations 88 IAU constellation lines + labels
│   │   │   ├── SkySatellites     Az/el dome projection with sun shadow coloring
│   │   │   ├── SkyStars          ~500 reference stars with RA/Dec→Az/El transform
│   │   │   ├── SkyBeam           Glow halo on connected satellite
│   │   │   ├── SkyTooltip        Hover tooltips for satellites + stars
│   │   │   └── SkyTrajectory     ±5min trajectory arc on hover
│   │   ├── GpsSatellites    GPS constellation overlay
│   │   ├── Sun              Directional light + glow + lens flare
│   │   ├── Moon             Textured sphere with Fresnel halo
│   │   ├── Atmosphere       Fresnel glow shader
│   │   ├── GroundStations   Gateway markers (star-shaped, operational/planned)
│   │   ├── ConnectionBeam   Dish-to-satellite-to-gateway beams (always mounted)
│   │   ├── DishMarker       Your dish location
│   │   └── SceneSetup       Camera, controls, starfield
│   └── hud/                 Overlay panels
│       ├── StatusBar        Connection state, uptime, quality
│       ├── TelemetryPanel   Ping, throughput, SNR charts
│       ├── SatelliteInfoPanel  Satellite link, gateway, PoP, confidence
│       ├── HandoffPanel     Starlink Network stats, shell info, handoffs
│       ├── SkyHud           Sky view stats (sun elevation, sat counts, UTC)
│       ├── EventLog         Real-time event feed
│       └── ViewControls     Space/Sky toggle, auto-rotate, altitude filter
├── data/                    Embedded datasets
│   ├── bright-stars.ts      ~500 stars (mag ≤ 4.0) with J2000 RA/Dec
│   └── constellations.ts    88 IAU constellation stick figures
├── stores/                  Zustand state (app + telemetry)
├── hooks/                   useSatellites, useHandoff
└── lib/
    ├── grpc/                Dish protocol, mock data
    ├── satellites/          TLE fetching, SGP4 propagation, satellite store
    ├── websocket/           Client + server + protocol
    └── utils/               Coordinates, astronomy, observer frame, sun shadow,
                             star coordinates, shell colors, formatting

• Next.js 16 — App router, API routes, SSR
• React Three Fiber — React renderer for Three.js
• drei — R3F helpers (OrbitControls, Billboard, Text, Stars)
• satellite.js — SGP4/SDP4 orbital propagation + GMST
• Zustand — Lightweight state management
• gRPC — Dish communication protocol
• Tailwind CSS 4 — Styling

Satellite propagation: TLE (Two-Line Element) data is fetched from CelesTrak. A headless SatellitePropagator component computes each satellite's position every animation frame using SGP4, writing into a shared Float32Array. Both Space and Sky views read from this shared buffer — propagation happens once regardless of which view is active.

Sky view: Satellite positions are projected from geocentric 3D coordinates to the observer's local horizontal frame (azimuth/elevation) using an ENU (East-North-Up) reference frame constructed from the dish latitude/longitude. Each satellite is placed on a virtual dome at its az/el position. Stars use RA/Dec→Az/El conversion via Greenwich Mean Sidereal Time. Sun illumination uses a cylindrical Earth shadow model to determine which satellites are sunlit vs. in shadow.

Dish telemetry: The Node.js server connects to the Starlink dish's gRPC interface, polling status and signal history. Data is broadcast over WebSocket to all connected browsers and stored in Zustand.

Sun and Moon: Positions are computed from real astronomical algorithms — the Sun from ecliptic longitude and Earth's axial tilt, the Moon from mean orbital elements with perturbation corrections. The directional light follows the Sun, so the globe's day/night side and the Moon's phase are both physically accurate.

This project aims to be as accurate as possible using exclusively public data. No proprietary SpaceX systems, internal APIs, or classified constellation parameters were used.

What this app does NOT have access to: SpaceX's internal satellite scheduling, inter-satellite laser link routing, per-satellite capacity/load, precise orbital data used by the dish (more accurate than public TLEs), or satellite maneuver/deorbit status.

Everything beyond public data and live dish readings is an approximation or educated guess. For a full breakdown of what's measured vs. inferred, see the Technical Review.

The /fleet page tracks Starlink constellation health over time using historical NORAD TLE data — constellation growth, altitude distribution, shell fill rates, launch cadence, satellite lifecycles, orbital planes, and ISL coverage.

The complete dataset is published on Hugging Face: juliensimon/starlink-fleet-data

• Daily constellation snapshots tracking every Starlink satellite (May 2019 → present)
• Per-shell daily aggregates: satellite counts by status (operational, raising, deorbiting, decayed, anomalous)
• Available as Parquet files for direct use with datasets, pandas, or DuckDB

• User Guide — Setup, configuration, UI walkthrough, and feature reference
• Technical Review — Data sources, accuracy analysis, and what's measured vs. approximated

MIT