Space-Based Flight Tracking

Have you ever wondered how pilots and air traffic controllers keep tabs on planes when they’re flying over the featureless whiteness of the Arctic or the endless sand of a desert? For years, long stretches of the planet were essentially “dark” to conventional radar and […]

Yes — in most cases, existing aircraft can be tracked by space-based ADS-B without adding new hardware to the airplane, as long as the aircraft already broadcasts ADS-B Out on the internationally standard 1090 MHz Extended Squitter (1090ES). That’s the practical short answer. Now let’s […]

Have you ever wondered who’s listening when a plane tells the world where it is? Modern aircraft “announce” their position over radio using ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast). For years, those announcements were picked up by towers on the ground. Today, satellites sitting in low Earth […]

Have you ever watched a flight-tracking app show an airplane cruising over the middle of the Atlantic and wondered, “How on earth do they know where that plane is?” For decades, big radar dishes on the ground were the only way to watch aircraft. But […]

Have you ever wondered how air traffic controllers know where a plane is when it’s flying over the middle of an ocean or a remote desert? Or how apps on your phone can show a jet crossing a continent in near real time? The secret […]