Space Situational Awareness Know what's in orbit, what it's doing, and what happens next
Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is the ability to detect, track, understand and predict what is happening in Earth orbit — across LEO, MEO and GEO. This hub explains SSA in plain English, and gives you a free, browser-based SSA toolkit: a live dashboard, imaging-overpass alerts, look-angle reports, maneuver detection, re-entry monitoring and debris mapping — all on live catalogue data.
Last updated: · Data: full public satellite catalogue + live space-weather feeds
Live counts from the Orbital Radar catalogue · space weather via NOAA SWPC · updated continuously
Quick definition
Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is the ability to detect, track, understand, and predict what is happening in Earth orbit. It combines live catalogue data, observation, and analysis to support safe and sustainable operations in space.
SSA is closely related to space debris tracking and forms the civilian foundation of Space Domain Awareness. New to the concept? Start with What Is Space Situational Awareness? — or learn it interactively in the Orbital Academy.
The free SSA toolkit
Professional SSA platforms cost five to six figures a year. These seven tools cover the core of the same workflow — catalogue awareness, behaviour monitoring, event detection and ground-segment analysis — free, in the browser, on live data.
What is Space Situational Awareness?
SSA is the ability to know what is in orbit, understand what it is doing, and anticipate what might happen next. It blends catalogue awareness with observation, context, and analysis to support safer and more sustainable space activity.
- Catalogue awareness: satellites, rocket bodies, debris objects
- Behaviour awareness: maneuvers, drift, orbital regimes
- Event awareness: launches, fragmentations, re-entries, anomalies
- Context awareness: space weather metrics linked to drag sensitivity in LEO
- Ground-segment awareness: access windows and look angles from any site
Think of SSA like air-traffic awareness — but for objects travelling at 28,000 km/h, where updates arrive over time and small changes can have big implications.
Orbital Radar's approach is a fast, visual sense-making layer over open catalogue data, so you can build analyst intuition in minutes instead of parsing element sets.
Why SSA matters now
Earth orbit is more congested than ever. Mega-constellations, weekly launches and long-lived debris fields make the orbital environment dynamic — and impossible to understand through static tables. The ISS performs multiple debris-avoidance manoeuvres each year, and 15,000+ active satellites now compete for orbital space.
Build your orbital picture in five steps
- Start at Orbital Eye — one screen with the live state of orbit: stats, space weather, countdowns and close encounters.
- Check behaviour — open the Maneuver Tracker to see what changed orbit in the last 24 hours and why it might matter.
- Screen your area of interest — use Groundlink for access windows and look angles from any site to any satellite, and Satellite Eye for who images that location.
- Watch the edges — the Re-entry Tracker for what's leaving orbit; the Debris Map for the congestion backdrop.
- Add context — live space weather explains drag, decay and anomaly clusters in LEO.
SSA vs Space Domain Awareness (SDA)
You may encounter the term Space Domain Awareness (SDA), used primarily by military organisations. SDA extends SSA to include threat characterisation, intent assessment, and adversary capability analysis. SSA is the civilian and scientific foundation — understanding what is in orbit and how it behaves — while SDA adds a defence and security layer on top. See Anti-Satellite Weapons for the security dimension.
Orbital Radar focuses on the SSA foundation: open catalogue data, live visualisation, and pattern recognition. For an overview of the tracking organisations involved, see Who Tracks Space Debris? and Data Sources.
Frequently asked questions
Orbital Radar provides a free browser-based SSA toolkit: Orbital Eye (live dashboard), Satellite Eye (imaging overpasses), Groundlink (look-angle and access reports), a Maneuver Tracker, Re-entry Tracker, Space Debris Map and close-approach conjunction screening — all built on the full public satellite catalogue.
SSA is the ability to detect, track, understand and predict what is happening in Earth orbit, combining catalogue data, observations and analysis to support safe operations in space. Read the full explainer: What Is Space Situational Awareness?
Yes — Groundlink generates STK-style azimuth/elevation/range access reports from any location to any tracked satellite, for live passes or any historical date back to 1957, including GNSS DOP.
SDA extends SSA with military dimensions like threat characterisation and intent assessment. SSA is the civilian foundation of understanding what is in orbit.
The US 18th SDS via Space-Track.org, ESA's Space Debris Office, the EU SST consortium, JAXA, and commercial providers like LeoLabs and ExoAnalytic Solutions.
No. Orbital Radar focuses on live visualisation and situational awareness. Conjunction assessment and manoeuvre coordination are specialised operational services.