r/satellites

I’m on TikTok (like half the planet), and a prompt came up asking what the most romantic thing I’d ever done for someone was.

I don’t know why, but for the first time, I told the abridged version of a story I’ve never shared publicly.

Back in 2013, while I was working at SpaceX, I used company equipment to sneak a declaration of my affection into the assembly of SES-8. After a couple of launch delays, it finally lifted off on December 3, 2013, and was placed into geostationary orbit roughly 22,000 miles above Earth—where it remains to this day.

It’s probably the most ridiculous, over-the-top, hopelessly romantic thing I’ve ever done, and more than a decade later, it’s still holding its orbit.

Hey everyone. I'm Nolan, 20, from Belgium. I'm fully self taught, I learned everything I know about code and orbital mechanics on my own, mostly late at night because space is the one thing my brain won't let go of.

I made this: orbitinsight.vercel.app

It's a satellite tracker that runs in your browser and updates in real time. It pulls live TLE data from Celestrak, uses SGP4 to compute where the satellites actually are, and calculates the Doppler shift. I also added a small physics sandbox so you can mess with orbital parameters and watch the trajectory change.

I know it's nowhere near the big established tools yet. I didn't build it to compete, I built it to learn and because I wanted orbital mechanics to feel real instead of just formulas on paper. I work on it pretty much every day so it keeps getting better.

Reason I'm posting is I want real feedback from people who know this way better than me. What's wrong or inaccurate? What's missing? If you actually track or observe satellites, what would make something like this useful to you instead of just a cool demo? Be brutal if you need to, that's what helps me the most.

Thanks for reading.

A new **study has found that current proposals to launch over 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.” According to the study, no more than 100 000 faint satellites, below naked eye visibility, should orbit Earth, to safeguard our ability to observe the night sky with modern telescopes. The study is the first to compute the extent to which large and bright satellite constellations — which have also raised concerns about their impacts on health and the environment — would affect astronomical observations by making the night sky brighter.**

I want to perform thermal analysis of a satellite in LEO using Thermal Desktop. Anyone good with Thermal Desktop please reach out.

The satellites being launched by Amazon are brighter than IAU-recommended limits. It means they’ll interfere with astronomy.

I spotted some satellites on the 23rd of December 2025 that I would like to take a look at again, just to see exactly what I was looking at. Is there a way to find this? I found it really interesting because it was a row of presumably satellites following in a direct line. I counted 5 or 6 just the few minutes I watched the sky, all following the exact same path across the sky.

Was just curious if there was a way to look up "live satellite maps" but on certain dates?

There is no 6G standard...yet. But the 3GPP standard for release 20 is coming together through various working groups across the industry. The target is 2030 under IMT-2030 framework.

One part of this standard has every single comms company or comms infrastructure provider moving with resolution toward the future. It is the convergence of NTN ( satcom and HAPS provided network coverage ) with Terrestrial networks ( the towers and the land lines ).

In 5G release 17 NTN and Terrestrial were treated as separate. NTN was seen as an "add-on" and not strictly part of the standard. But it was highly suggested as a "good idea" and probably where the future of Global Connectivity ( https://www.reddit.com/r/GSAT/s/dN4cn6madU) was going.

Ok. Cool. So what?

Physical AI ( robots, drones, driverless cars, etc ) absolutely need a network and connectivity to Neural Network Models, data, software tools and services to operate effectively. That network can't be flaky and regional or of uncertain quality or insecure.

Think of some examples:

-Youre a global hyper power with most dominant military power on Earth and you want to deploy your autonomous army to defend a peninsula of land somewhere in Asia. You've been building this army of drones, robots in secret for the last 10 years to defend and defeat a human army that outnumbers your own human army 25 to 1. That autonomous army will not only level the playing field but end up rendering human soldiers a liability in future battles. But you can't do it if your enemy can knock out all the comms infrastructure. It's a single point of failure. What's needed is a multi-node matrix of comms capabilities ( sats, towers, HAPS, FWAs, etc ) that provide redundancy and robustness.

-youre the most dominant global e-commerce company on earth. You're trying to automate you're distribution, fulfillment and logistics apparatus to provide faster service, better quality at a lower cost. You've built robots, drones, self driving delivery trucks and are ramping your own satcom service, but you need ubiquitous, secure, highly reliable network to connect it all together. Not a patchwork of regional telcos with a separate satcom provider over the ocean.

-Youre a major tier 1 carrier and you have just purchased a fleet of high altitude platform vehicles ( HAPS ) that can be brought quickly into use and provide added capacity in areas of network congestion....like a World Cup Football match where Cameroon beats Brasil. Not that that would happen or anything. Or maybe it would.

You get the picture. Obviously I've just barely scratched the surface of physical AI use cases and how 6G/ Release 20 will usher in a revolution of Global Connectivity. Don't believe me? Then think about why Amazon bought Globalstar. Or why SpaceX absorbed Echostar spectrum. Or...why Verizon, ATT and T-Mobile have all lined up with satcom providers.

Physical AI is where the real $$$ will be made in the AI revolution. This will expand human capabilities and reach way beyond what we can do today.

Ok...but how does all that relate to GCTS?

For physical AI, indeed...AI in general, communications goes from being important to being absolutely, critically FOUNDATIONAL.

Every single robot, drone, autonomous vehicle, access points, base station and DATA CENTER ( space or terrestrial ) will need a comms chip set that can reliabily, securely, globally and efficiently communicate.

Every. Single. One.

How many is that by 2030?

((( Tens of billions of devices ))).

The current "just use wifi or 5g" paradigm just died!!

GCT Semiconductor's genius, and the reason that MaxLinear ( MXL ) and a global satellite communications company , I believe to be Amazon+Globalstar, have set their reference architecture around GCT chips...is that they already have this 6G standard...more or less...figured out. To the uninformed this doesn't seem like a big deal, but take a minute and research the complexities of doppler shifts, terrestrial to satellite comms hand-offs, attenuation, weather and physical object interference and super super super important: POWER Optimization. This is a difficult domain to master and those who've figured out the algorithms and the AI models to make it work have a golden diamond encrusted asset. It's a unique coupling of IP: physical chips design, firmware, models and algorithms.

Ok I get it but why wouldn't Qualcomm and Mediatek just come in here and blow up GCTS' world?

Anything is possible and to dismiss this risk would be naive. So let's look at why I think this is a low probability event:

1. Its a huge pie and it's growing fast. I completely expect Qualcomm and Mediatek to wake up to the opportunity and begin to optimize around the new standards. They are part of the working groups. They have highly capable engineering teams. But there is going to be more than enough business for 3 big comms chip firms. You don't have to be #1 to make a shit ton of money!

2. The agreements with MaxLinear and the satcom company bake GCTS into the architecture and are referenced by GCT itself as "sticky". This says these companies have committed to GCT for the long haul. It also gives GCTS a pathway into all kinds of other device makers that aren't publicly known today!!

3. GCT customizes and works with their clients, customers for specific use cases. This will be a natural competitive advantage in Physical AI world where the use cases will proliferate beyond handheld cell phones and laptops. Qcom and Mediatek currently maximize profits by selling standard chips to cell phone makers. That's their gambit. VOLUME.. That's how they make money. They are now moving to edge AI. Why? Because that's where they see volume. Lower volume customized business is less attractive to their business models.

Makes sense. So why isn't the share price booming to double digits then? Come on man I want to retire!!

My suspicion is there a number of factors playing into timing of GCT's share price ramp. Let's look at these:

1. Until recently there was a real balance sheet risk for GCT. This has been mitigated via use of ATM where $55M has been raised even while the stock was rising over 152% from lows. Naturally this brings up the "Oh my God they diluted!" crowd. Dilution is a serious problem if the funds are just used for "operating purposes", but when they are used to buy inventory to be sold or invested in R&D expenses to fully develop out a reference platform architecture...then it's actually a really good way to finance those activities outside of retained earnings.

2. Show me the money man. I'm of the conviction that many institutions have already piled in and taken an initial allocation to GCT. I think the 13Fs will eventually prove that over the coming months. ( And I don't mean asset managers like Vanguard, State Street, Fidliety or Blackrock...these are just passive ETF product providers and IRAa/401k/HSA administrators. Their holdings are your holdings in your accounts. It's you and me buying stuff that they hold custodianship for us. ). But even with the recent run up, the bean counters want the plan, the hope to match the factual reality. So there is a wait and see before further accumulation. This is a smart and risk averse acquisition strategy for Hedge funds using borrowed dollars or major Pension Funds paying police, firefighter, teacher retirements. They go to zero and they might go to jail. Your brokerage account goes to zero and your wife will yell at you and you'll have a bad weekend.

3. The opportunity cost of waiting. Some don't think it's worth waiting for the ramp and think it will take longer than expected. They see better opportunities elsewhere in the interim. Different investment horizons and competing investment theses are a natural part of the capital markets.

4. Stock prices are, in financial theory, a reflection of discounted present and future cash flows. Analysts already have targeted $3-4 per share by EOY 2026. Any higher requires confidence that the revenue ramp and profitability will be there to justify a higher price. I'm on record as saying $10-12 is realistic by EOY 2026 because I believe there will be many surprise positive announcements that will bring the full revenue picture into a more meaningful light. Particularly once the satcom partner ref architecture becomes finalized! I think the market is heavily discounting what this will mean for device integration across the multi-facted use case a combined Amazonstar represents.

5. GCTS is getting lumped together in ETFs and by trading algorithms with the makers of memory and GPU chips and the market has doubts about how much further demand there is for memory, CPU/TPU/GPU. That's unfair and a bit of an opportunity for the smart investor since comms chips will grow in need even as GPUs and Memory stall or decline

GCTS is a gathering 10x deca-millionaire maker. The fund managers see it. Smart money retail is in. It's there.

The biggest gains come from the things no one was watching. If it's heavily watched, analyzed, known...then the ROI is baked in already. Eventually the vast crowd will wake up and realize "Oh yeah. Global communications is the next critical leg in the AI revolution. Everyone needs it and it's going to need a massive chip upgrade. " The multiples I mentioned above ( billions of devices ) will reprice GCTS. There's even the possibility a larger player buys out GCT before things really get rolling. By 2027 people will stop asking me about double digits and say "How comes it's not at triple digit stock yet?!!". Markets always live in the future. ;)

Hi everyone,

I'm searching for a site like World Imagery Wayback, but with a shorter timestamp and good quality satellite pictures.

Can someone give good recommendations?

Recently I have been doing some research and I would like to understand more about this topic and how it is actually addressed by space agencies.

The ablation and vaporization of aluminium in the atmosphere produces aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃). As far as I understand, the environmental impact caused by the increase of these metallic particles in the stratosphere and mesosphere is not fully understood. Although it is already known that it can act as a catalyst in reactions with inert molecules such as HCl, contributing to the thinning of the ozone layer.

This makes me think that, as humanity, we are deliberately increasing the concentration of these particles in our atmosphere without fully knowing the possible consequences. Elon Musk plans to place 34,000 Starlink satellites in orbit and has requested permission for 1,000,000 orbital data centers. The impact that the launch and re-entry of these satellites would have on the environment is certainly negative and not fully understood.