What are Starlink trains?

Starlink trains are the strings of evenly spaced bright dots seen for a few nights after a launch, while a newly deployed group is still flying in close formation at low altitude. Once each satellite raises itself to its operating shell the spacing breaks up and the train disappears, so any given train lasts days rather than weeks.

Live now

As of 24 August 2026, 10,969 Starlink satellites are in orbit — by far the largest satellite constellation ever built, flying mostly at about 550 km in shells that cover the whole planet.

LIVE STARLINK CONSTELLATION — ALL 10,600+ SATELLITES · TRAINS DETECTED WHEN ACTIVE

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Overhead

Active train

Below horizon

You

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above horizon

above 15°

10,600+

in orbit total

📡 STARLINK CONSTELLATION — LIVE STATUS

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🚀 NEXT STARLINK LAUNCH

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Each cyan dot is a real Starlink satellite above your horizon right now. At any moment roughly 100–200 Starlinks are overhead — though most are too faint to see with the naked eye. They orbit at around 550km altitude, completing a full orbit every 95 minutes.

Starlinks provide internet service by bouncing signals between the satellite above you and a ground station thousands of kilometres away — all in under 20 milliseconds. The constellation is dense enough that at least one satellite is always in line-of-sight from any point on Earth.

WHEN CAN YOU SEE THEM?

Individual Starlinks appear as faint moving dots — around magnitude 3–6 (brighter soon after launch, dimmer once they reach their operational 550km orbit), visible to the naked eye on a dark clear night. The best time is during twilight — 30 to 90 minutes after sunset or before sunrise — when the satellites are sunlit but your sky is dark enough to see them. In full darkness they enter Earth’s shadow and disappear.

🚂 WHAT IS A STARLINK TRAIN?

When SpaceX launches a new batch of Starlinks — typically 20–25 satellites at once — they release together and orbit in a tight line for the first few days. This is a Starlink train: a string of evenly-spaced bright dots moving silently across the sky. Most spectacular 24–72 hours after launch, lasting around 5 days before the satellites spread to operational orbits. SpaceX launches Starlinks every 2–4 days in 2026, so fresh trains appear somewhere in the world almost every week. On the globe above, amber dots connected by a line indicate an active train over your area.

HOW TO READ THE GLOBE

Each coloured dot is a real Starlink satellite plotted using live TLE orbital data — the same data NORAD publishes for tracking every object in orbit. The position you see is calculated from that data in your browser, updating several times per second as the satellites move. Here’s what each colour means:

Cyan dots are Starlinks above your local horizon right now — the ones that could theoretically be seen from your location if they’re sunlit and the sky is dark enough. Dark blue dots are Starlinks below your horizon, blocked by the curvature of the Earth. The green dot marks your location, and the faint ring around it traces the horizon — roughly 2,500km out, which is as far as any LEO satellite at 550km altitude can be seen from ground level. When a fresh launch batch is detected, those satellites appear as amber dots connected by a line, showing the characteristic “string of pearls” formation.

WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING AT

Starlink satellites aren’t distributed randomly — they’re organised into several orbital shells, each at a specific altitude and inclination angle to the equator. The three main shells account for most of what you see on the globe:

SHELL 1 — 53° INCLINATION

The original and largest shell. Around 540km altitude, covering everywhere between 53°N and 53°S — which is most of the populated world. If you draw a band from southern Canada to the tip of South America on the globe, that’s where the bulk of Starlinks cluster. Most passes you can see from mid-latitudes come from this shell.

SHELL 2 — 70° INCLINATION

A smaller shell at 570km altitude, reaching up to 70°N/S. This extends coverage into Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, and the far southern oceans. Satellites here appear on the globe as a tilted band closer to the poles than Shell 1.

SHELL 3 — 97.6° POLAR

A retrograde polar orbit at 560km — satellites here cross directly over the North and South poles, providing connectivity for Arctic and maritime users. On the globe they appear to move nearly north-to-south rather than west-to-east.

This is why the constellation looks like overlapping diagonal bands rather than an even cloud: each shell is a fixed geometric pattern, and the bands shift over time as Earth rotates beneath them. The live globe shows the real positions updated from current TLE data — not a simulation.

The next generation

The satellites overhead today are mostly V2 Mini. The next generation, V3, is bigger, flies lower — around 350 km against the V2 Mini’s 500 km-plus — and carries a 2,048-element phased array delivering over a terabit per second of downlink each. SpaceX has also been lowering its primary shell from about 550 km toward 480 km through 2026.

The catch is that V3 needs Starship. Twenty were deployed on Starship’s suborbital Flight 13 in July 2026 — they made contact, returned data and then burned up on reentry as planned, because the flight never reached orbit. Flight 14, targeted for the end of August 2026, is the first attempt to put operational V3 satellites into orbit. Until that works, the constellation grows 20–29 at a time on Falcon 9.

FREQUENTLY ASKED

Why don’t I see 10,600+ dots on the globe?

The globe renders up to a few thousand satellites at once for performance reasons, especially on mobile. You can toggle between “Visible only” (satellites above your horizon — typically 100–300) and “All sats” (full constellation) using the control below the globe. The underlying data includes every tracked Starlink; the limit is rendering, not coverage.

Why are dots clustered in a band and not evenly spread?

Because the bulk of Starlinks orbit at a 53° inclination, they can only appear between 53°N and 53°S latitude. That’s the band you see. Satellites in the 70° and polar shells fill in the higher latitudes but there are far fewer of them. An “even cloud” would only happen if the constellation were distributed across every possible inclination, which it isn’t.

What altitude are they orbiting at?

Most Starlinks orbit between 540 and 570 kilometres above Earth — very low compared to traditional geostationary satellites at 36,000km. Newer Gen2 shells sit slightly lower at 525–535km. The low altitude is what makes Starlink latency acceptable for internet use: signal round-trips are under 30 milliseconds versus several hundred for geostationary.

How accurate is the position data?

Positions are calculated from TLE data (Two-Line Element sets) published by NORAD, typically updated every few hours. The math used in your browser (SGP4 propagator) is the same algorithm professional tracking tools use. Accuracy is within a few kilometres for recently updated TLEs, drifting to tens of kilometres over several days. For visual satellite spotting, this is more than accurate enough.

Why do some dots glow brighter than others?

The globe highlights Starlinks in two ways: cyan dots above your horizon are brighter than the dark-blue ones below, because those are the ones potentially visible to you. If an active train is detected from a recent launch, those satellites are shown in amber and connected by a faint line to make the formation obvious. Dot brightness on the globe is a visual indicator, not a representation of actual apparent magnitude in the night sky.

How is this different from the main Starlink tracker?

This page is the visualisation — a 3D globe showing the full constellation and where satellites are right now. The main Starlink tracker is the status dashboard — live constellation health, next-train info, overhead counts, and launch history. If you want to see the shape of the constellation, use this page. If you want pass predictions or to check if a train is coming, use the tracker. For identifying something you just saw in the sky, see the Starlink train guide.

Starlink Constellation — Common Questions

How many Starlink satellites are in orbit?

More than 10,000 — the live counter above shows the current tracked total straight from the public orbital catalog. SpaceX launches new batches every 2–4 days, so the number climbs almost weekly.

Why do the satellites form diagonal bands on the globe?

Starlinks aren’t scattered randomly — they fly in orbital shells at fixed inclinations (most at 53° to the equator). Each shell is a geometric grid of orbital planes, which reads as overlapping diagonal bands that drift as Earth rotates beneath them.

Can you see the Starlink constellation from the ground?

Individually, most operational Starlinks are too faint for the naked eye. What you can see is a freshly launched Starlink train — a string of bright dots crossing the sky for a few days after each launch, before the satellites raise and dim.

How often does SpaceX launch new Starlinks?

Roughly every 2–4 days in 2026, with 20–29 satellites per Falcon 9 batch. The next-launch panel above tracks the upcoming one live.

Will Starlink really reach 42,000 satellites?

About 12,000 are approved by the FCC, with filings covering up to roughly 42,000 in total — and SpaceX has separately filed to operate up to 100,000 of the larger V3 satellites, so the ceiling people quote depends entirely on which filing they mean. Whether it gets there depends on demand and regulation — but at the current launch cadence, a constellation of tens of thousands within a decade is plausible.