This documentation explains how to use OrbitalGuard to review orbital objects, examine potential close approaches, and interpret the risk information the platform presents. It is written for the people who work with orbital data, including CubeSat teams, satellite operators, aerospace researchers, and engineers, as well as any technical user who wants to understand the orbital environment more clearly.
You do not need to be a specialist in orbital mechanics to get value from OrbitalGuard, though a working familiarity with satellites and orbits will help.
Getting started follows a simple path from access to insight.
Sign in to OrbitalGuard with your account. Once you are signed in, you reach the main workspace where orbital information is presented.
Take a moment to get familiar with how information is organized: the orbital objects available for analysis, summaries of potential close approaches, and the risk related indicators that help you decide where to look first.
Explore the objects that OrbitalGuard is analyzing and the information associated with them, such as their identity and orbital characteristics.
Move from individual objects to the relationships between them, reviewing potential close approaches and the information that describes them.
The dashboard is the central view that brings your orbital picture together in one place. Its purpose is to help you understand current orbital conditions at a glance and to guide your attention toward the situations worth reviewing more closely.
Taken together, this information helps you understand orbital conditions and decide where to focus. It is important to remember that the dashboard is there to inform your judgment. It presents information and indicators, and it does not make or automate operational decisions on your behalf.
Orbital objects are the satellites, spent rocket bodies, and other tracked items that populate the orbital environment. In OrbitalGuard, each object represents one of these tracked items, described using the orbital information available from public catalogs.
You can review the information associated with an object to understand what it is and how it moves, including its identity, its orbital characteristics, and the available catalog information the public source records about it.
Object details matter because orbital relationships are always about more than a single object. When you are assessing a potential close approach, understanding both objects involved, including what they are and how well each is tracked, helps you interpret the situation with the right context. A close approach between two well tracked objects can be read with more confidence than one involving an object whose data is sparse or old.
A conjunction is a close approach between two objects in orbit, a moment when they are expected to pass near one another. OrbitalGuard helps you find and understand these potential close approaches so you can decide which ones warrant a closer look.
When the platform presents a potential close approach, it provides information that helps you understand the event, including the time of closest approach, estimated distance information, and which objects are involved.
This information should be read as analytical insight. A conjunction insight in OrbitalGuard is an indicator derived from available data and modeling. It is not a guaranteed collision event, and it does not state that a collision will occur. Its role is to draw your attention to a situation that may be worth reviewing, using the best information available, so that you can apply your own judgment and, where appropriate, other sources.
When a potential close approach draws your attention, a useful habit is to check how recent the underlying data is, consider how far in the future the approach falls, and note how well each object is tracked. From there, follow your own operational process for how to review or escalate the situation.
Risk indicators exist to help you prioritize. The orbital environment contains a very large number of objects, and not every situation deserves the same level of attention. Indicators give you a way to sort signal from noise and to focus on the approaches and objects that matter most for your work.
Two things are essential to reading risk information correctly. The first is context: an indicator is a starting point for understanding, not a conclusion, and it should be considered alongside what you know about the objects and the mission involved. The second is data quality: risk information is only as good as the underlying data, and an indicator based on old or imprecise elements carries more uncertainty than one based on fresh, well tracked data.
For this reason, risk indicators in OrbitalGuard describe relative attention rather than guaranteed outcomes. They help you reason about what may matter, and they leave the final assessment to you.
Most teams care about a specific set of objects, such as their own satellites and the objects around them. Watchlists let you focus on those objects, rather than the entire catalog, which makes day to day work more efficient.
By building a watchlist of the objects most relevant to your mission, you can review the information that matters to you without being distracted by the wider population of objects. Keeping your watchlist focused helps you notice changes and stay oriented as you review them, making your orbital awareness practical and repeatable.
Using OrbitalGuard well depends on reading orbital data with an understanding of its limitations. Orbital elements are estimates derived from observations, and some objects are tracked more often and more precisely than others. Public data is updated on the schedule of its sources rather than continuously, so there can be a gap between an object's real state and its most recent published information. Estimating where an object will be in the future is inherently uncertain, and that uncertainty increases the further ahead you look. Not every object is tracked in public catalogs, and coverage is not uniform.
For a fuller explanation of how OrbitalGuard processes data and why these limitations exist, see our Methodology page, which describes the data sources, propagation, and conjunction screening behind the platform in more detail.
No. OrbitalGuard provides analytical insights about potential close approaches between objects. It highlights situations that may be worth reviewing based on available data and modeling, but it does not guarantee collision outcomes and does not state that a collision will or will not occur.
No. OrbitalGuard provides information only. It does not control satellites, send commands to spacecraft, or take any operational action. All decisions and actions remain with you and your team.
No. Orbital data is based on observations and carries uncertainty. Its accuracy varies between objects, it is updated on the schedule of its sources rather than continuously, and predictions become less certain the further into the future they extend. This is why context and data quality matter when interpreting any result.
No. The platform is designed to make orbital information more accessible. A working familiarity with satellites and orbits helps, but this guide and the Methodology page explain the key concepts in plain terms.
OrbitalGuard reflects the publicly available data it works with, and that data is refreshed on the schedule of its original sources rather than continuously. As a result, there can be a gap between an object's most recent published information and its real state, which is one reason to consider data age when interpreting any result.
OrbitalGuard is designed to support your awareness and analysis, and it works best as one input among several. It helps you see and reason about the orbital environment, but it does not replace the expertise and procedures that guide real operations.
Use OrbitalGuard together with mission expertise, professional judgment, and appropriate operational procedures. Where a situation carries significant consequences, validate the platform's outputs against other trusted sources and consider them within your own operational framework.
This documentation is a starting point for getting the most out of OrbitalGuard. If you have questions that this guide does not answer, we are glad to help.