Orbita
Beta — active testing

Ground station control, right from your browser.

Orbita drives the KB3GTN Positioner (AZ/EL antenna rotator) and an Icom IC-9700 transceiver for amateur satellite work — SGP4 pass prediction, live tracking, and real-time Doppler correction, with no desktop install and no build step.

Download See Screenshots
Orbita Operations window showing target tracking, AZ/EL chart, rotator and radio control

Features

SGP4 Pass Prediction

Full SGP4 propagation against CelesTrak's active-satellite catalog, reporting AOS/LOS, max elevation, and orbit number for every pass in your window — filtered to the satellites you actually care about.

Automated AZ/EL Tracking

Drives the KB3GTN Positioner (BLE AZ/EL rotator) through an entire pass automatically — prepositioning, AOS start, waypoint refill mid-pass, and stow at LOS — with no operator babysitting required.

IC-9700 CAT & Doppler

CAT control over the radio's own USB port sets Main/Sub frequency and mode, and continuously pushes Doppler-corrected uplink/downlink frequencies while tracking, with passband offset and TX trim for inverting transponders.

Sun & Moon Tracking

Live az/el for the Sun and Moon using a Meeus-algorithm implementation with topocentric parallax correction — handy fixed targets for antenna calibration and field tests.

Your Satellite Database

A curated, hand-vetted database of active amateur satellites and transmitters ships in the box, and you can add or correct entries locally without waiting on an upstream update.

Runs Anywhere on Your LAN

One headless backend, any number of browser windows or tabs sharing the same live hardware state — open the Operations window on your shack PC and a status view on your phone at the same time.

Screenshots

Select Target dialog listing upcoming passes with a satellite selection checklist
Select Target — upcoming passes, sorted chronologically, with a full satellite picker.
Select Target Mode dialog listing a satellite's transmitters with RX/TX frequencies and modes
Select Target Mode — pick the transponder to operate on for the active pass.
Station Setup window showing ground station location, rotator, and radio configuration
Station Setup — ground station location, rotator, and radio configuration in one place.
Your Satellites card for adding or correcting satellite and transmitter entries
Your Satellites — add or correct satellite/transmitter entries without waiting on an upstream update.
Orbita Operations window in light theme
Light theme, if the dark shack look isn't your thing.
Orbita system tray icon with Open Orbita and Quit menu options
The backend runs from a system tray icon — open or quit it without a terminal.

Architecture

Orbita is a headless Rust backend (orbita-server, built on Axum) paired with a plain HTML/CSS/JS frontend — no bundler, no npm, no build step. The frontend talks to the backend over one WebSocket per browser window, using a small request/response and push-event protocol.

  • orbita-core — SGP4/TLE math, IC-9700 radio control, and the KB3GTN Positioner's BLE protocol client. No knowledge of the web server or a browser.
  • orbita-server — serves the frontend as static files and exposes orbita-core over a WebSocket RPC/ event API. One shared application state, so every connected window sees the same hardware and mission state.
  • Runs from a system tray icon (Windows & Linux) — open or quit the backend without a terminal window.

Status

Working

  • SGP4 pass prediction
  • Automated AZ/EL pass tracking
  • KB3GTN Positioner control
  • IC-9700 CAT control
  • Live Doppler correction
  • Sun & Moon position
  • Curated + user satellite database
  • TLE mirror (orbita.kb3gtn.us)

Beta / Planned

  • Zenith flip-mode auto-tracking
  • Continuous Sun/Moon tracking
  • Indefinite GEO tracking
  • GPS ground-station auto-setup
  • IC-9700 Normal/Reverse tracking
  • Jog/track-session lockout

Downloads

Windows

orbita-server 0.3.6 · x86_64 · MSI installer · 4.5 MB

Installs Orbita as a regular Windows application. Launch it from the Start menu; it opens the Operations window in your default browser.

Download .msi

Ubuntu 26.04

orbita-server 0.3.6-1 · amd64 · .deb package · 3.2 MB

Install with sudo apt install ./orbita-server_0.3.6-1_amd64.deb, then run orbita-server from a terminal or the applications menu.

Download .deb

Orbita is still in beta and active testing — see the Status section for what's verified vs. still in progress.

Either package prints a URL (http://127.0.0.1:7878 by default) to open in a browser — override the port with ORBITA_PORT and the bind address with ORBITA_BIND. Source isn't public yet; it's headed toward an open-source release once it's further along.