Satellite Tracker is the follow on to our award winning Sat series of applications. Satellite Tracker merges all the features of the iPhone and iPad versions providing you a single application that seamlessly optimizes the interaction model to the device you’re running it on.
The application will calculate the rise/set times and associated azimuth and elevation for the selected satellite, Sun or Moon given either the user entered or network retrieved location.
There are two modes for satellite rise/set calculations. The first is for those folks wanting to know all overflights for a given location (like Ham radio operators) while the second mode computes only those passes where the satellite would be visible to a ground observer. In the ground observer mode, the calculations not only take into account that the ground is dark but also that the satellite is in sunlight (it even takes into account if the satellite becomes lit or unlit during the pass).
In addition, you can see the Earth rendered either as a 3D globe or a 2D map using photo realistic texture maps for the Earth. The orientation of the map is easily changed by a simple rotation of the device from portrait (3D) to landscape (2D). In either orientation you can zoom in and out as well as pan using the touch screen.
There are more than a dozen controls provided to allow you to customize how the application works to meet your specific needs (type of Earth texture used, location, type of overflight calculated…)
Finally, the application is now free to download and provides full functionality for tracking, viewing and communicating with the International Space Station (what was the capability of the ISS family of paid apps). The following subscriptions are available for tracking and communicating with a larger set of satellites:
-HamSat (Annual and Monthly): Provides access to the NORAD and AMSAT two line element sets which cover all amateur related satellites.
-ProSat (Annual and Monthly): Provides access to thousands of satellites grouped into the following categories (from www.celestrak.com):
-100 (or so) Brightest
-Last 30 Day’s Launches (or so)
-Amateur Ham Radio Satellites
-CubeSats
-Disaster Monitoring
-Earth Resources
-Education
-Engineering
-Geodetic
-Geostationary
-GOES
-GPS Operational
-Intelsat
-Iridium
-Molniya
-NOAA
-Orbcomm
-Search & Rescue (SARSAT)
-Space & Earth Science
-Space Station
-Weather
To get a feel for the apps, please checkout the iPad quickstart video here and associated user’s guide here or the iPhone quickstart video here and it’s user’s guide here.
Thanks to everyone who has sent in their questions/requests and keep them coming!
-W0VOS (aka Craig or support@vosworx.com)