# Historic satellite positions **URL:** \ **Category:** Science\ **Created:** [January 14, 2022, 9:27pm UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225 "2022-01-14T21:27:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ireyes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/www.rubin.community/ireyes/32/1179_2.png) [@ireyes](https://www.rubin.community/u/ireyes)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 9:27pm UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225/1 "2022-01-14T21:27:17Z")
Hi! Sorry if the question is slightly off-topic, but I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get historic positions of satellites. I’m trying to check if some observations that I have are indeed satellites or not. Doing a quick search on the internet there are some resources to find current positions of satellites, but I don’t know how to retrieve the positions for one or two years ago. Considering that low earth orbit satellites will be a mayor source of bogus events, I thought that maybe someone in this community might be working on this topic. Cheers, Ignacio ---
**Author:** ![JeanLucMargot](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/www.rubin.community/jeanlucmargot/32/1869_2.png) [@JeanLucMargot](https://www.rubin.community/u/JeanLucMargot)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2022, 9:45pm UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225/2 "2022-01-14T21:45:37Z")
[CelesTrak: Historical NORAD Two-Line Element Sets](http://celestrak.com/norad/archives/) (1980-2004) [https://www.space-track.org/](https://www.space-track.org/) (other dates) ---
**Author:** ![ireyes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/www.rubin.community/ireyes/32/1179_2.png) [@ireyes](https://www.rubin.community/u/ireyes)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2022, 9:04pm UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225/3 "2022-01-17T21:04:11Z")
Thanks for the info! ---
**Author:** ![jacky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce73a5/32.png) [@jacky](https://www.rubin.community/u/jacky)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 8:10pm UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225/4 "2022-01-24T20:10:46Z")
It would be better to know the part of the sky the two objects traveled. At any time there are tens of satellites over any spot on Earth, so not having your orientation nor constellations as reference is very difficult to assert what you actually saw. ---
**Author:** ![roy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/www.rubin.community/roy/32/1254_2.png) [@roy](https://www.rubin.community/u/roy)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2022, 8:45am UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225/5 "2022-01-25T08:45:17Z")
Recent paper from ZTF on Starlink has another source of satellite orbits. Impact of the SpaceX Starlink Satellites on the Zwicky Transient Facility Survey Observations [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac470a](https://webmail.roe.ac.uk/OWA/redir.aspx?C=mHyRoTPqRVyfjhaaJNFkFTg333ezMFrJlhIX_1kVUJb2dubJ3t_ZCA..&URL=https%3a%2f%2fiopscience.iop.org%2farticle%2f10.3847%2f2041-8213%2fac470a) Section 3 is Identification of Starlink Trails, where they quote this list of starlink satellites [https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/starlink.txt](https://webmail.roe.ac.uk/OWA/redir.aspx?C=XF-LI1JaftDb1r8r0crMiOAws4jTxD_QpeK2ID_KZZ_2dubJ3t_ZCA..&URL=https%3a%2f%2fcelestrak.com%2fNORAD%2felements%2fstarlink.txt) “These TLEs (also called “supplemental TLEs”) are derived from latest Starlink ephemeris data provided by SpaceX and allow one to predict the position of the satellite with the precision of 500 m or better.” ---
**Author:** ![mrawls](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/www.rubin.community/mrawls/32/2810_2.png) [@mrawls](https://www.rubin.community/u/mrawls)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2025, 7:54pm UTC](https://www.rubin.community/t/historic-satellite-positions/6225/6 "2025-07-31T19:54:58Z")
Hi Ignacio, as an extremely belated reply to your inquiry, I wanted to point you (and any other interested lurkers) to SatChecker: [satchecker.readthedocs.io](http://satchecker.readthedocs.io). There is a nice FOV example notebook in the documentation that does exactly what you were asking for three years ago 🙂