A Drawing Machine That Tracks Satellites Whizzing Overhead

Satelliten is like a traffic camera for low-Earth orbit, tracking the orbits of satellites overhead.
Satelliten draws the orbital activity overhead.
Satelliten draws the orbital activity overhead.Quadrature

To most people, GPS technology exists in the form of a tiny blue dot rendered in a map app on a smartphone screen. Only occasionally, if ever, do we mentally unfurl the acronym and think about what it actually describes: satellites, in space, talking to our gadgets.

But GPS accounts for just 24 of the 1,200 or so active satellites orbiting Earth. These include commercial satellites that deliver radio and internet, weather satellites that let us know whether we'll need an umbrella and government satellites that spy, well, everyone. Some are bus-sized giants sailing briskly through space, others are little bigger than a loaf of bread.

Satelliten draws the orbital activity overhead.

Source

Just like the data centers and undersea cables, satellites are an immense infrastructure that's largely invisible to us. Satelliten, an installation created by the Berlin design group Quadrature, makes them visible in real time.

Relying on a database maintained by the US Air Force, the machine traces the path of active satellites, in pen, on paper maps as they fly overhead. Mainly, it's an exercise in helping people see the unseen. "Satellites themselves are real objects but very intangible," the creators said in an email. "We are hoping that using pen and paper will make their existence a bit more 'real.'"

The rig operates within a 10 centimeter square plot---a parcel small enough to work with a variety of paper maps and atlas pages. Quadrature poetically refers to the canvas as "a window to the sky."

Eventually it inks in a solid block.

Quadrature

The output depends on the machine's location. In Berlin, the group says, there's almost always action. In their studio, the rig goes no more than a few minutes without detecting a satellite. It would remain quiet for longer stretches in remote areas where there's less satellite activity overhead. You can think of it as a traffic camera for low-Earth orbit.

Quadrature's trio of designers are hardly oblivious to the tidy metaphor at the heart of their creation. "Printed maps are generally on the decline and are more and more becoming historic documents," they note. "Adding a newer layer of human civilisation that covers the old one is an aggressive act of overwriting." Put differently: The blue dot on your smartphone map is made possible by the black squares on these paper ones.

Tip of the hat to the good folks at Creative Applications for the find.