Live on the globe now: 40 tracked
This is the rocket launch layer of overwatch.earth: a live 3D globe with each upcoming orbital launch plotted at the exact pad it lifts off from. Spin to Cape Canaveral, Baikonur, Vandenberg, Kourou or Wenchang and you see what is on the manifest next, then click a launch to read its details. The data comes from TheSpaceDevs Launch Library 2 (LL2), an open, community-maintained spaceflight database, pulled from its upcoming-launches feed. Each marker carries the mission name, the launch service provider (SpaceX, Roscosmos, ULA, CASC, Rocket Lab and others), the pad and location names, the status (Go, TBD, Hold, Success), and the NET — the "No Earlier Than" scheduled time, which is how spaceflight timing is really expressed since launches slip. We refresh hourly, in line with LL2's rate limits, so the schedule stays current without hammering the source; launches without an assigned pad are skipped because there is nothing to place on the map. This is one of roughly 29 live layers on the same globe — flights, ships, satellites, earthquakes and more — that you can toggle on or off to build the view you want. Free, no login.
Data source: Launch Library 2
From TheSpaceDevs Launch Library 2 (LL2), an open spaceflight database. We read its upcoming-orbital-launches feed and place each launch at its pad's coordinates. If the production host is throttled, we fall back to the LL2 dev mirror so the layer keeps updating.
NET stands for "No Earlier Than" — the scheduled launch time as published by LL2. Spaceflight schedules slip for weather, technical holds and range conflicts, so providers quote a NET rather than a fixed minute. Each launch also shows a status such as Go, TBD or Hold.
We poll Launch Library 2 about once an hour. LL2 enforces a strict rate limit (roughly 15 requests per hour on the production host), so hourly polling keeps the manifest fresh while staying within the source's limits.
It tracks upcoming orbital launches that have a pad assigned in LL2, shown at that pad. Sub-orbital flights and launches with no pad in the database are not plotted. Each marker lists the mission, provider, pad and launch site.