With tens of thousands of objects being already in orbit and hundreds of thousands coming up in the near future, it is no secret that keeping track and predicting orbital attitude and position for those objects is imperative for viable and sustainable space operations and explorations.

SatNOGS Optical provides a low-cost and opensource hardware and software ground station, using the STVID tools and an COTS video camera for video-based data acquisition for satellite detection and identification. The open nature of the project enables the deployment of more sensors and greater coverage, thus faster orbit maneuver detection. Data acquired are uploaded to SatNOGS DB, an open database, hence it lowers the entry barrier for third parties to participate with their own sensors, while at the same time providing everyone with safer and cheaper SSA.