A live, interactive 3D map of every satellite and piece of space junk since Sputnik, plus the solar system, the Moon and Mars landings, and the nearest stars. Free, no accounts, no install. Below: ready-made setups for common lesson topics, each with discussion questions, a one-click link and an embed.
1. Project it
Pick a topic below and hit “Open in the atlas” full-screen on the classroom display. Guided stories narrate themselves: captions, camera and timeline are automatic.
2. Embed it
Every topic has a copy-paste iframe for slides, Google Classroom, Moodle, Canvas or any page that accepts HTML. No script, no API key.
3. Let them explore
Hand students the direct link. It runs in any browser (Chromebooks, tablets, phones) with no account, no install and nothing to grade… until you ask the discussion questions.
Lesson topics
Earth orbit · all ages
How crowded is space?
Every dot is a real tracked object: over 30,000 of them. Scrub the timeline from Sputnik in 1957 to today and watch orbit fill up, launch by launch.
In class, ask
Before opening it: how many working satellites do students think are up right now?
Drag the year slider: when does growth suddenly accelerate, and why?
A guided camera flight outward from the Space Station: through the busy low-orbit shell, past the navigation rings, out to the ring that never moves. Each altitude has its own job.
In class, ask
Higher orbits are slower. Why does altitude set a satellite's speed?
Match the job to the shell: internet, Earth photos, GPS, TV. Why does each live where it does?
The ISS goes around in 92 minutes, GEO in 24 hours. What could a 12-hour orbit be useful for?
At exactly 35,786 km up, one orbit takes one day, so a satellite hovers over a fixed spot. The view is filtered to the GEO ring; the story locks the globe so the ring stands still.
In class, ask
Kepler's third law: why does only one altitude give a 24-hour orbit?
Why do TV dishes never need to move?
GEO is too high for the atmosphere to clean. Where do dying GEO satellites go?
Three events (an anti-satellite test, a head-on collision, another test) filled low orbit with tracked shrapnel. The story plays them date by date, cloud by cloud.
In class, ask
Every fragment is a bullet moving at ~28,000 km/h. Why can't we just clean it up?
What is the Kessler syndrome, and why does debris breed more debris?
Who should be responsible for a piece of 1970s rocket that hits a satellite today?
Uses the on-demand debris layer, so it needs the full atlas. Use the links above.
Astronomy · all ages
The solar system, to scale
All eight planets, the dwarf planets, major moons and the probes leaving the system, all driven by the same clock as the satellites. Three scale modes show why textbook diagrams can't be drawn to scale.
In class, ask
Try Scene → Scale → “To scale”: how empty is the solar system, really?
Open “Compare sizes”: how many Earths fit across Jupiter?
Find Voyager 1. How long has it been travelling, and how far has it got?
The James Webb Space Telescope doesn't orbit the Earth. It circles an empty point of gravitational balance 1.5 million km away, four times farther than the Moon.
In class, ask
Why park a telescope at L2 instead of in Earth orbit like Hubble?
Which way does its sunshield face, and what must it never look at?
Nobody can visit it to fix it. What did that mean for the launch?
Twenty landing sites pinned on the real lunar surface: Apollo, the Soviet Luna probes, and the new wave from China, India and Japan. Pins appear on the timeline at their landing dates.
In class, ask
Why are all six Apollo sites on the side we can see?
The Moon is tidally locked. What does that mean, and which missions landed on the far side?
Half a century passed between Apollo 17 and the new landings. Why?
Every successful (and failed) landing from Viking to Perseverance and Zhurong, pinned on the real Martian surface, plus the fleet of orbiters mapping the planet today.
In class, ask
Roughly half of all Mars landing attempts failed. What makes landing there so hard?
Find Perseverance in Jezero crater. Why did scientists pick an ancient river delta?
A radio signal takes 4 to 24 minutes each way. How do you drive a rover with that delay?
The ~150 closest stars in real 3D, with the Sun at the centre. Stars with known exoplanets are ringed. Click one to see how many worlds it has and when the first was found.
In class, ask
Light from Proxima Centauri takes 4.2 years to reach us. What does “light-year” actually measure?
How do astronomers find a planet they cannot see?
Voyager 1 is our fastest outbound probe. How long would it need to reach the nearest star?
Keyboard shortcuts while projecting: space plays/pauses, ←/→ step a day (shift: a month), and ? shows everything else.
Languages: add &lang=fr or &lang=zh-CN to any link or embed to pin French or Simplified Chinese.
Make your own setup: arrange any view in the atlas and hit “Share”. The link reproduces it exactly. Or configure a custom iframe in the embed builder.
Local relevance: “Above me right now” (under the search box) shows the satellites over your school this minute, and the Sky view turns a phone into a pointable sky map for the next ISS pass.
The data is real: the public CelesTrak catalog of every tracked object since 1957, refreshed daily: live-tracked satellites match what real ground stations see.
