Satellite
Current ground track
Accumulated coverage
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Environmental satellites like Terra, Aqua and Suomi-NPP monitor Earth's climate by circling the planet in low, near-polar orbits while a nadir-pointing sensor sweeps a swath of surface beneath the ground track. This simulator computes a real Keplerian circular orbit — period and speed from the satellite's altitude via T = 2π√(a³/μ) — and rotates the planet underneath it in real time, so the ground track visibly drifts west orbit after orbit until the accumulated swath has painted the whole globe, exactly as a sun-synchronous mission builds up a full day of climate data. Tune altitude, orbital inclination and sensor field of view to see how each one trades off orbital period, swath width and how completely — and how evenly across latitude — the satellite actually covers the Earth.