ORBITAL DEBRIS TRACKING OBSERVATORY — EST. 2019
Three ground nodes, phased-array radar, and adaptive optics resolve low Earth orbit to sub-meter debris. This is the live sky above our Atacama node, updated in real time.
Catalog counts are hard numbers. Everything below ten centimetres is statistical — modeled from radar cross-section sampling and impact-flux surveys, not individually tracked.
FRAGMENTATION EVENTS, LOGGED
HIGH-DENSITY SHELLS
775–825 km and 975–1,015 km hold the two densest debris bands in LEO — legacy fragmentation clouds from FENGYUN 1C and COSMOS 2251. Combined they account for 19% of tracked mass in under 3% of the orbital volume.
Screened against the active catalog every six hours. Probability of collision (Pc) above 1×10⁻⁴ triggers an operator notice; above 1×10⁻³ triggers direct contact.
Ground segments were sited for sky coverage, not convenience — high altitude, low light pollution, clean radio horizon.
24.63°S 70.40°W 2,635m ASL
Primary node. Two 12m phased-array radar dishes and a 1.2m adaptive-optics telescope. Clearest optical nights in the network — under 40 cloud-cover hours a year.
69.68°N 18.94°E 312m ASL
Polar-orbit specialist — sun-synchronous and molniya passes are visible from here for hours a day. Laser ranging unit came online in late 2023.
23.70°S 133.88°E 545m ASL
Southern-sky fill-in for geosynchronous belt monitoring. Dish 2 offline for bearing replacement since 2026‑06‑28; single-dish tracking only until parts clear customs.
TLE sets, conjunction screenings, and raw radar cross-section data — issued under three access tiers. All feeds are UTC, all altitudes are km above WGS84.
PUBLIC
No cost
Catalogued objects >10cm, TLE sets refreshed every 12h, 24h delay on new fragmentation events.
rate limit — 100 req/day
OPERATOR
Licensed, per constellation
Real-time TLE, automated conjunction screening against your fleet ephemeris, direct advisory contact for Pc > 1×10⁻³.
rate limit — 50,000 req/day
RESEARCH
Institutional agreement
Raw radar cross-section returns, optical light-curve archives, fragmentation-event forensics data back to 2019.
rate limit — negotiated
SAMPLE REQUEST — GET /v2/conjunctions
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KS_TOKEN" \
"https://api.kessler-station.net/v2/conjunctions?since=2026-07-08T00:00:00Z&min_pc=1e-5"
{
"count": 3,
"results": [
{
"designation": "CDM-2026-190-A",
"primary": { "norad_id": 58234, "name": "STARLINK-30412" },
"secondary": { "norad_id": 33765, "name": "COSMOS 1408 DEB" },
"tca_utc": "2026-07-10T08:32:00Z",
"pc": 1.2e-4,
"miss_distance_m": 620
}
]
}