@SAT Orbital Tracking Software

If you share my fascination with anything that flies or moves in space you’ll want to peek over my shoulder as I have a good look at a very sophisticated program that tracks the four biggest earth orbiters as well the Mars Rovers.

Want to know when the International Space Station flies over your hometown? Or see the latest exciting photographs from Mars?

Back in high school (that’s way before the Apollo program had taken off) I knew I wanted to be an astronaut. Well, I’ve never flown higher than FL200 in our pressurised Centurion so that doesn’t quite qualify me… But a lifelong enthralment with aeronautics ensued and the first program I ever bought for my PocketPC was John Cody’s SatAlert.

That program enabled me to casually say to visitors: “Do you wanna see the Space Station fly over? It’ll be coming into view in just a minute…”

I knew exactly when the ISS would be visible from wherever I happened to be as the software also alerted me (via Microsoft Outlook) a few minutes before it happened.

@SAT does not only keep track of the Hubble Telescope, the Shuttles (when they’re flying again) but also the Soyuz and International Space Stations. And, a bit further away, it also follows the antics of our Mars Rovers (sorry, the Beagle2 is not listed but only because that puppy forgot to call home).

SurvivorSoft did a good job in giving us a simple and at the same time pretty interface but let me assure you: nothing is simplistic about what’s going on behind the scenes to bring you all that information.

For starters, they have developed this hefty program (weighing in at around 2MB) with Microsoft’s .NET Technology and you must make sure that you have Compact Framework Service Pack 1 on your PocketPC with WM2003 to run @Sat.

Most new PocketPCs already have the updated CGACUTIL  file (it has to be version 1.0.3111.0 or greater). You can check which version you have by using File Explorer and finding that file in Windows.

Downloading the newer CGACUTIL file is easy. You can download it from here.

 Be aware: it’s about 14.5 MB!! (are there ever any small files coming out of Microsoft or do they all get paid per line of code??)

The space vehicle data comes from NORAD and NASA but is being massaged by a powerful Orbiter Tracking Engine to predict where the orbiters are. This is then projected on a flat-earth map of the earth. (I think this may well be the only concession to “flat-earthers” J )

How does the program keep up to date?

Glad you asked. Any time the PDA is connected to the Internet it will be updated automatically.

No manual intervention is needed. Brilliant.

Data for the low-flying (that’s relative, of course!) shuttles, which manoeuvre a fair bit, will be updated several times a day whereas the higher orbiting Hubble and ISS get updated maybe twice a week. When you’re connected you can also download the latest images and news which is another great feature.

The photos are viewable when you're offline and you can even email this pictures.

Talking about user-friendly software: SurvivorSoft is also developing this program for Microsoft SmartPhones (available in the next few days) and for the Nokia, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson platforms. It will then be possible to automatically calculate the location of the user and make overpass calculations even easier and more accurate. How good is that?

I’m hoping that this feature will also come to GPS equipped platforms, such as my iPAQ.

And I also would like to see the OAF (Overpass Alerting Feature) implemented.

I have no doubt that many more features will be added soon as I found the SurvivorSoft team very responsive to my queries and suggestions.

For instance, I found the slider (used for scrolling down lists & pages) tiny and very hard to drag. The hat switch could easily be used for that function, which they promised to fix ASAP.

When I first got the software there was no trial edition available and at the reasonable price of USD12.95 that’s not really much of an issue. We still think it’s a good idea to have trial editions available for all software so that you may check not only the features but also to see if it works on your platform. So, yes, they will have an evaluation program as well! This should be available in the next couple of days.

Did I tell you they also working on a PocketPC2002 edition? All happened as a result of a simple request by a reader. Responsive? You bet!

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