How to Track The Space Shuttle

Space flight enthusiasts are usually also fans of science, astronomy and just about everything to do with space. For these folks, NASA is a regular source of valuable information, so it should come as no surprise that many of the resources listed here are, in fact, buried within NASA's website. For tracking the space shuttle, most of the action takes place on the section of NASA's website known as "Human Space Flight (HSF)" located at spaceflight.nasa.gov. The image shown here is the orbital tracking tool that NASA offers at that page. This tool is mostly used by internet visitors to track the International Space Station (ISS).

The next valuable tracking tool from NASA that you'll want to check out is SkyWatch (spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/). This very cool tool lets you click on a map of the world to tell the system what you're particular location is on the planet, as shown in this photo.

Once you've chosen what continent that you're on, then you can select a more specific region such as state and even city. If you can find the location nearest you, the results will be much more accurate.

Finally, when you click on either "next pass" or "next sighting," the application will tell you the exact time and information about the next time the chosen craft (satellite, ISS or Shuttle) will pass over your location. If you're an amateur astronomer or sky gazer, SkyWatch is one of the coolest application to track not only the shuttle, but when everything else that orbits the Earth might pass over your location.

The next application that you'll want to make sure you're using when the space shuttle next launches is NASA's J-Track (http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/Jtrack/spacecraft.html), which is a realtime graphical display of every object orbiting the earth, projected over a map of the earth. Night and Day is shown as a shaded region, and at times the map can appear pretty busy as all of the objects and trajectories are displayed in real time as shown in this picture.

Another very cool real-time graphical tool is NASA's J-Track 3D (http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html). This tool provides you with a 3 dimensional rendering of every single satellite that's orbiting the earth. Hubble and the International Space Station are shown with colored orbits (as is the Shuttle I believe), however the sheer number of satellites displayed in this 3-D tracking tool is astonishing. Just check out the image.

One of the coolest, obscure sites that hardly anyone knows about (but more people should) is FlightAware (http://flightaware.com/). This site lets you keep an eye on the 1100+ aircraft in its database on a real-time map of the United States. The first page map shows all flights as red dots (it's amazing how many aircraft are in the air), and if you select browse by airport or aircraft type, the images are overlaid on top of a map of the U.S. as shown on this photo. Now, on June 2 of 2009, FlightAware let users track the Space Shuttle Atlantis - so this is another site you may want to check out to track the space shuttle.

Another fantastic site to track satellites as well as the space shuttle is "Heavens Above," where you can view a 3 dimensional image of the United States, orientated by your coordinates, that normally displays the path and location of the International Space Station. You can also use it to watch the path and orbit of the Space Shuttle during its mission.

Another very cool feature of Heavens Above is that if you click on "spacecraft escaping the solar system," you can check out where the distant NASA probes are. These are probes that are visiting distant planets, and this site shows you the current locations of those craft. Examples include Pioneer, Voyager and New Horizons. The data is displayed in both graphical format and in charts.

Finally, another cool resource you can use to track the shuttle on the ground is NASA's "ground tracking tool," that provides media with a chart of the shuttle's ground path in various scales, very close, medium range or long range. These images aren't real-time, but provided to the media immediately and a great way to take a close look at more of the shuttle's travel path. Whichever tool (or tools) that you plan to use, tracking the shuttle can be a very exciting activity, either on your own or with your kids. All of the resources described above can help you in that endeavor. Have you ever used any other resources to track human space flight? Share your opinion in the comments section!