Space-Based Flight Tracking

Satellites listening to aircraft sounds futuristic, but today space-based flight tracking is reshaping safety rules and how airlines plan flights. Why does regulation care? Because when your flight over the ocean suddenly becomes visible from space, the legal, safety and operational picture changes. And why […]

Yes and no — in a nutshell, some larger, cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can appear in space-based surveillance networks when they transmit the right signals, but the vast majority of small consumer drones are not reliably visible to today’s satellite-based ADS-B/space monitoring systems. The […]

If a plane flies over an uninhabited jungle, a vast desert, or a remote stretch of ocean, can anyone still know exactly where it is? That’s the core of the question people ask when they worry about safety, search-and-rescue, and operational control in places without […]

Space-based flight tracking turned a long-standing blind spot into an operational capability: satellites can now listen to aircraft broadcasts and give near-global position visibility. That matters for safety, search-and-rescue, airline operations, and even hobbyist tracking. In this extended guide I’ll walk you through the major […]

When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in March 2014, the world watched a baffling gap open in the sky: an airliner simply stopped being visible by normal means and then never reappeared in a way that pointed searchers to a wreck. That vanishing act forced […]

Have you ever opened a flight-tracking app and watched a private jet glide across the map, its tail number and route visible like a breadcrumb? Nice for curiosity — troubling when that visibility includes sensitive governmental flights, medevac missions or a family’s private travel. Global […]

Yes — small aircraft and general aviation (GA) can benefit from space-based tracking, often in surprisingly powerful ways. You asked me to expand the previous article, so here’s a much deeper, richer version: more technical detail, more practical guidance, more examples, and a clearer roadmap […]

Have you ever watched a flight tracker and wondered how controllers and airlines know where a plane is when it’s flying over nothing but ocean, ice, or desert? That “how” matters a lot when safety is on the line. Space-based tracking changed the game by […]

Satellites changed the way we watch aircraft. They opened up oceans, polar skies and deserts that ground radars couldn’t reach. But does “seeing from space” mean seeing everything, perfectly, all the time? Not at all. Like any technology, space-based flight tracking has blind spots, trade-offs […]

Have you noticed flight maps showing planes over the middle of the ocean or above polar ice? You might have wondered whether those positions are as trustworthy as the radar blips controllers rely on near airports. That’s a good question. In aviation, “trust” in data […]