The service
Orbinauts is a website at orbinauts.com, a public API at api.orbinauts.com, the embed, the live map shown inside other sites' pages, and the card, the picture of a city's next visible pass that other sites show. All of them are free of charge, without accounts and without warranty, a hobby project of the operator named in the legal notice. Using any of them means accepting these terms.
Using the site
You may read, link to and share every page. Nothing on the site may be presented as endorsed by NASA, Space-Track or any agency.
Using the API
The API is anonymous and open to any origin. Each calling address may make a limited number of requests per hour; the limit and the remaining quota are stated in the headers of every response, and a request beyond it is refused with status 429 until the hour turns. Wherever you show data from the API, show the credit line it carries: Data: Orbinauts, orbits from Space-Track. Automated use that ignores the limit or disguises its origin is not allowed.
The embed and the card
You may show the live map in your own pages through the embed, on any page, commercial pages included, with the snippet the embed page hands out. The attribution must stay visible and unaltered: the line inside the frame and the caption link under it, both linking back to the full map. Showing the map without them, or under another name, needs a licence: write to the address below. There is no limit on the number of pages that embed it.
The same goes for the card each city page hands out with its snippet: the credit line drawn in the picture and the snippet's link around it, back to the city page, must stay. Showing the picture without them, or as your own, needs a licence too.
Licence
Everything Orbinauts hands out, positions, passes, the elements it republishes and the dataset of cities, is licensed under CC BY 4.0, with the credit line above as the attribution the licence asks for. The data sources page says where each part comes from. The site's code, its name and its logo are not licensed.
What the answers are and are not
Positions and pass times are estimates computed from published orbital elements and ephemerides, which are themselves approximate and go stale. They are meant for people who want to see a satellite. They are not for conjunction assessment, collision avoidance, navigation or any other use on which safety, property or a legal obligation depends. The operator does not warrant that any answer is accurate, complete or current, or that the service is available at any time.
Liability
The operator is liable without limit for intent and gross negligence, and for injury to life, body or health caused by negligence. For slight negligence the operator is liable only for the breach of a duty on which the service depends and whose observance you may rely on, and then only for the foreseeable damage typical of such a service. Beyond that, liability is excluded; the service is free, and the statutory liability of a donor applies.
Changes and ending the service
The operator may change the site, the API, the embed or the card, add or remove satellites and endpoints, and stop the service altogether, at any time and without notice. These terms may change the same way; the version on this page applies.
Law and contact
German law applies. Write to hello@orbinauts.com about anything here. This version is from September 2026.