About Astro Radar

Astro Radar lists every rocket launch in the next 30 days, from every provider, and works out whether you could see each one from your ZIP code, when, and where to look. It also links each launch's official webcast, and lets you set a reminder or add a launch to your calendar. There are no accounts and nothing to sign up for.

Astro Radar is a product of Astro, the group chat that actually makes plans (Astro is for people 18 and over). Share to Astro opens Astro with the launch you picked, to send to a chat or make a plan to watch it: how it works.

How the view is estimated

The rating is a modeled estimate, never a promise. For every second of the flight it works out where the rocket is, whether it is above your horizon, and how it is lit: by the sun, against a dark or a bright sky. How far away people see a launch depends on that light: a white trail in daylight out to about 124 mi (200 km), the engine flame at night out to about 249 mi (400 km), and a sunlit plume against a darker sky after sunset or before sunrise out to about 590 mi (950 km). Smaller rockets are fainter.

Its limits: the flight's direction is often guessed from the orbit, the climb is a typical one for the rocket, not this flight's, and clouds count only where the National Weather Service has a forecast for your ZIP code (the page says when they are not counted). Trees, buildings and hills are not known to it. It leans cautious: a false Excellent view is worse than a false Low view. The documented launches it is checked against are listed in VISIBILITY.md.

Contact

Questions, corrections or a broken link: open an issue on GitHub.