Gpredict

Gpredict is a real-time satellite tracking and orbit prediction program for Linux. It computes where artificial satellites are at the current moment from orbital element data, and it projects that motion forward to work out when a satellite will next rise above the horizon at a chosen ground station.

The live tracking view updates as the satellites move, while pass prediction covers the periods ahead, which is the part most useful for planning an observation session or a radio contact. Work is organised around ground station coordinates and the set of satellites a user decides to follow, so the same program serves amateur radio operation, visual observing, and classroom demonstrations of orbital mechanics.

The program comes from Alexandru Csete under the GPL-2.0-or-later licence and is packaged for Linux, so users on other operating systems would need either a Linux environment or a different tool. Prediction quality depends on how recent the supplied orbital elements are, so keeping that input current matters as much as the software itself.