As most folks know, we at LeoLabs are focused on tracking objects in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) regime. And with good reason. LEO is where the exponential growth is occurring in space, with an upcoming order of magnitude increase in the number of operational satellites across multiple large constellations…
LeoLabs is pleased to announce that we will provide our Launch and Early Orbit tracking service to SpaceX’s customers as part of their SmallSat Rideshare Program. Drawing on the success of providing this service to satellite operators on the Transporter-1 mission, LeoLabs will provide this support to users for the…
Last week, LeoLabs officially unveiled the latest radar in its global network — the Costa Rica Space Radar. This post will take a closer look at this important addition to our operational capabilities for tracking objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
The Costa Rica Space Radar is located in the…
On July 12, 2020, LeoLabs detected a breakup event of a Japanese H-2A debris object (NORAD ID 43673) in space. The event was first reported by the 18th Space Control Squadron (18 SPCS) reporting an approximate breakup time of 08:44 UTC:
Upon receiving this news, the LeoLabs team rapidly…
As any experienced satellite owner-operator knows, the first hours and days following a satellite launch can often be the most precarious. It can be challenging to locate and establish initial communications with your spacecraft in a timely fashion, especially on rideshare missions where there may be multiple other operator payloads…
For the past year and a half, we’ve been hard at work maturing our capabilities to accurately identify and monitor potential collisions in LEO. We activated our internal conjunction screening service in early 2019, a first of its kind system that performs a continuous full catalog search for potential collisions…
There’s a lot of growth happening in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Over the next 5–10 years, we expect at least an order of magnitude increase in the number of operational satellites to be launched. However, not all satellites are distributed evenly in LEO. Just as we have varying amounts of…
At LeoLabs, we track nearly 14,000 objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and continuously screen for potential collision events 24/7. While we always have notable events of interest to study, the close approach this week of the IRAS and GGSE 4 satellites turned out to be one of the closest…
One fun and interesting thing to explore on the LeoLabs platform is the visualization of all the objects we are tracking in Low Earth Orbit. At https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization you can see a stream of the locations of roughly 14,000 objects over the past 24 hours. In the menu on the upper-left…
