ALOUETTE 1 (S-27)
Country: Canada
Live Position
Ground Track · Last 90 Minutes
Upcoming Passes · Over Your Location
About This Satellite
Alouette 1 launched on September 29, 1962 to study the ionosphere from above. Canada designed and built the spacecraft, while an American Thor-Agena rocket launched it from California. The achievement was national satellite-building capability, not an independent Canadian launch vehicle.
The ionosphere was the target, not the landscape
The mission investigated the upper-atmospheric environment involved in radio propagation. Its scientific value therefore differs from that of a land-imaging satellite even when their catalog maps look similar. A ground track indicates where the spacecraft passes, not a strip of ordinary photographs made by Alouette.
A one-year design became a decade of science
CSA describes a mission designed for one year that ultimately operated for ten. Its present value includes the historical observations preserved from that period. An inactive spacecraft and a scientifically useful archive can coexist; the end of transmission does not make the collected measurements worthless.
Mission reference: Canadian Space Agency: Alouette I mission history. Editorial review: .
What an ionogram actually shows
Alouette ionograms represent radio echoes from the topside ionosphere, rather than optical pictures of a glowing atmospheric layer. Ground teams processed the signals and recorded the resulting plots on 35 mm film. Interpreting one requires understanding the plotted radio measurements, not treating its shapes as coastlines or cloud boundaries.
Reference: Canadian Space Agency: ionograms and historical data restoration.
Digitized does not automatically mean analysis-ready
CSA provides scanned ionograms and extracted parameters through its open-data portal. The portal explicitly warns that extracted values are primarily demonstrations, may contain errors, and should not be used directly for science. Compare extracted values with the scans and methodology before drawing quantitative conclusions from the restored archive.
Reference: Canadian Space Agency: Alouette archive and extraction limitations.
Reading this orbital snapshot
Based on TLE epoch: 2026-09-05. Estimated altitude ranges from 983 km at perigee to 1,019 km at apogee, a difference of 35 km. The orbital period is about 105.1 minutes. Eccentricity 0.00238 indicates a nearly circular path. In a two-body approximation, perigee speed is 1.00 times apogee speed. These are mean-element estimates, not instantaneous measurements. Distance per orbit uses an ellipse approximation.
Saved build snapshot. If a valid TLE is retrieved, this explanation and the orbit panel update together. Otherwise this dated snapshot is retained.
Ground track is not sensor coverage
An inclination of 80.47 degrees implies approximate geocentric ground-track limits of 80.5 degrees north and south. This is a prograde orbit, moving in the same general direction as Earth rotation. The plotted line marks the point beneath the object. It does not represent camera coverage, radio reception, or a guaranteed visible pass.
Accuracy and missing information
The introductory record describes the build snapshot. The orbital snapshot explanation and orbit panel share any successfully retrieved TLE; check the displayed epoch. Reentered objects retain historical data only. Mission history is not rewritten by TLE updates. TLE/SGP4 positions are predictions and can change after maneuvers or updated observations. The 14-day stale-data cutoff is a display safeguard, not an accuracy guarantee. Local passes are geometric predictions, not a visibility forecast. No verified operator or mission status means unknown, not active. Do not use this catalog for collision avoidance or operational flight decisions.
Catalog sources: CelesTrak SATCAT: NORAD 424 · GCAT: S00424 (source update 2026 Sep 4 2345:57). Supplementary metadata: SatNOGS DB, retrieved 2026-09-05T12:57:25.375Z. Page assembled 2026-09-15. GCAT phase codes describe trajectory phases, not mission health.
Learn more: TLE data · Perigee and apogee · Ground tracks · JOT (Jewawud Live Orbital Map)