Can I see the ISS from where I am right now?

Only when three things are true at once: the station is above your local horizon, the station is in sunlight, and your own sky is dark. It carries no light you could see from the ground — it is visible purely because it reflects sunlight — which is why passes cluster in the couple of hours after sunset and before sunrise, when you are already in darkness but the station, four hundred-odd kilometres up, is still catching the Sun. The observer panel on this page checks all three for your location if you ask it to: it measures your coordinates against the station's current sub-point and horizon footprint, works out how far above your horizon it sits and which compass bearing to look along, reads the feed's own sunlit-or-eclipsed flag, and computes the Sun's height in your sky. The only judgement call in there is ours and is labelled as ours: below about ten degrees of elevation the panel calls the station obstructed, because that low down it is behind trees and rooflines. It answers for the present moment only. Predicting when the station will next come over you needs its full orbital element set propagated forward, which NASA's Spot The Station does.

Where is the ISS right now?

The International Space Station was at 50.97° S, 129.67° E, 433 km above sea level and travelling 27,555 km/h as of 2026-10-12 12:19:40Z. It completes an orbit roughly every 92 minutes and covers about 7.7 km every second, so any single position is only good for a few seconds. The globe on this page refreshes every five seconds from the same public feed, names the nearest populated place so the position means something, and draws the horizon footprint — the patch of ground with line of sight to the station at that instant — at the radius the altitude in the current fix gives rather than at a fixed size.

What is the Kp index?

Kp — the planetary K-index — is a 0 to 9 scale of how much the solar wind is disturbing Earth's magnetic field, averaged over three hours across a global network of magnetometers. 0 to 3 is quiet, 4 is active, and 5 or above is a geomagnetic storm, the point at which aurora becomes visible well outside the polar regions. The current reading is 1.33, which is quiet. Aurora should stay inside the polar circle tonight.

How far south does the aurora reach at this Kp?

Aurora sits on an oval centred on the geomagnetic pole, not the geographic one, and the oval reaches progressively lower geomagnetic latitudes as Kp rises — that relationship is published by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center as a table of viewing latitudes, running from about 66.5 degrees geomagnetic at Kp 0 down to about 48.1 degrees at Kp 9. Your geomagnetic latitude is not the number on a map: the dipole is tilted, which is why northern Britain sees aurora that the same geographic latitude across the Pacific does not. The observer panel on this page converts your coordinates to geomagnetic latitude and compares them against the edge for the current Kp, then prints the gap in degrees so you can weigh it yourself. That is a comparison against a published table rather than a forecast, it is either side of the line rather than a probability, and it accounts for neither cloud nor moonlight nor streetlights — NOAA's own 30-minute aurora forecast is the authority on whether anything will actually appear.

Is an asteroid going to hit Earth?

No. NASA states that no known asteroid poses a significant risk of impact for the next hundred years — its Sentry system continuously screens every catalogued object for impact risk, and nothing on the current list rates a concern. Objects do pass inside the Moon's distance routinely, which is what the close-approach panel on this page is listing. The 'potentially hazardous' label applied to some of them describes orbital geometry — an object large enough to matter that can pass within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth's orbit — not an incoming impact.

SYS // LIVE CONDITIONS

Live space conditions

Four readings, updated continuously: where the International Space Station is, what the Sun is doing to Earth’s magnetic field, what is passing close today, and what launches next. Each card below gives the number and says what it means — the detail underneath is there if you want it, and folded away if you don’t.

Space station

IN ORBIT

433KM UP

Over 50.97° S, 129.67° E — at high southern latitudes — at 27,555 km/h. It laps the planet every 92 minutes.

Geomagnetic

QUIET

1.3KP, OF 9

Aurora should stay inside the polar circle tonight.

Closest today

ROUTINE

77.2× MOON'S DISTANCE

164207 Cardea (2004 GU9) is the nearest of 2 tracked objects passing today — 77.2 times further away than the Moon. Nothing is on a collision course.

Next launch

SCHEDULED

T-··:··:··

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-25 from Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA.

Out there now

ALL SEVEN PLANETS

EARTH

5 TRACKED

ISSTRACKED

Locating the station against the nearest populated place… 433 km up, in Earth's shadow.

Altitude: 433 km
Speed: 27,555 km/h
Lighting: Earth's shadow
Footprint: 2,285 km

View

Drag the globe to spin it, or use the view buttons. The gold line is the ground track — dashed where the station has been, solid where it is going. The cyan circle is its horizon footprint: stand anywhere inside it and the station is above your skyline right now. Positions come from a live feed; the track is propagated from the current fix and is good to a few tens of kilometres over the hour and a half shown, not a pass prediction.

Position, altitude, speed and orbital period of each tracked object
Object	Over	Altitude	Speed	Orbit
ISSThe International Space Station. Crewed continuously since 2000.	51.1°S 130.2°E	428 km	27,585 km/h	93 min
TiangongChina's space station. Its Tianhe core module, crewed since 2021.	35.1°N 108.8°W	392 km	27,638 km/h	92 min
HubbleThe Hubble Space Telescope, observing since 1990.	2.7°S 147.0°E	467 km	27,473 km/h	94 min
SwiftNeil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Catches gamma-ray bursts as they happen.	2.1°S 137.6°E	295 km	27,818 km/h	90 min
TerraNASA's flagship Earth-observing platform, flying since 1999.	26.5°S 128.3°E	696 km	27,029 km/h	99 min

THE STATION IS LIVE FROM ITS OWN FEED · THE OTHERS ARE COMPUTED FROM PUBLISHED ORBITAL ELEMENTS UP TO 9 H OLD · MEASURED ACCURACY 14.5 KM OF GROUND TRACK AGAINST AN INDEPENDENT PROPAGATOR · SOURCE CELESTRAK

WHERE THAT IS

LOOKING DOWN FROM THE NORTH

Every angle here is real. This is genuinely where the planets are right now, seen from above the Earth’s orbit.

Distances are drawn on a logarithmic scale, because Neptune is seventy-eight times further out than Mercury and a true-scale diagram at this size would fit the four inner planets inside a single pixel. The order and the angles are exact; only the spacing is compressed.

Nothing appears to move, because at this scale nothing does — Neptune covers a fifth of a degree in a month. Run the clock forward and the inner planets race while the outer ones barely stir, which is Kepler’s third law in one picture.

OBSERVER FIX

SYS-05/LOCAL

AWAITING OPT-IN

FROM WHERE YOU ARE STANDING

Is the station over your horizon?

Share your location and this panel works out, from the same fix the tracker above is using, whether the ISS is above your skyline right now — how high, which way to look, how far away it is, whether it is lit and whether your sky is dark enough to see it — plus where your latitude sits against the auroral oval at the current Kp reading.

WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR POSITION

Our code holds it in this browser tab’s memory and nowhere else. It never reaches our servers, nothing is written to storage or a cookie, and we make no request of any kind with it.
It is used for arithmetic on this page only: distance to the station’s sub-point, the direction to look, the Sun’s height in your sky, and your geomagnetic latitude.
Clearing it, closing the tab or reloading the page removes it. There is nothing left to delete afterwards.
Nothing here reads your position on its own — the button above is the only thing that asks, and your browser will ask you again on top of that.
Worth saying plainly rather than leaving implied: once computed, your coordinates appear on screen as ordinary text, and this site carries advertising and affiliate scripts from third parties, as most sites do. We do not hand them your position, but we are describing our own code, not theirs. Clearing the fix takes it off the page.

DEEP FIELD SCAN

SYS-04/APOD

2026-10-12

NASA Science

How many moons can you see? The best answer is five: four orbiting Jupiter and Luna orbiting Earth. This multi-moon picture was possible because Earth's Moon moved directly in front of Jupiter last week. The featured image is a series of exposures near alignment taken from Westchester, New York, USA. The sunlit crescent of Earth's Moon, on the lower left, is overexposed, while the Moon's night side, on the upper right, is faintly illuminated by Earthshine. Lined up nearly vertically above our Moon, listed from bottom to top, are Jupiter's bright Galilean satellites: Ganymede, Io, Callisto, and Europa. Callisto, Ganymede, and Io are larger than Earth's Moon, while Europa is only slightly smaller. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is currently orbiting Jupiter and has made close passes near three of these moons.Tomorrow's picture: stairway to heaven

CREDIT: NASA // PUBLIC DOMAIN

Full frame APOD page

SPACE WEATHER

SYS-02/KP

QUIET

PLANETARY K-INDEX

1.33

OF 9

0 QUIET5 STORM9 EXTREME

BANDQUIET

STORM SCALEBELOW G1

AURORAUNLIKELY

OBSERVED2026-10-12 09:00:00Z

The magnetosphere is settled. Nothing to see and nothing to worry about.

Aurora should stay inside the polar circle tonight. Kp is a 0–9 measure of how hard the solar wind is shaking Earth’s magnetic field, averaged across a global network of magnetometers over three hours; 5 and above is a geomagnetic storm.

The planetary K-index is 1.33 — quiet. Aurora should stay inside the polar circle tonight. Saw something you cannot place? Check what was overhead →

Detail

Full station telemetry11 READINGS + GROUND TRACK

ISS GROUND TRACK

SYS-01/25544

LIVE // 5S

180°W90°W0°90°E180°E

STATIONHORIZON FOOTPRINT 2,285 KM51.64° INCLINATION LIMIT

LATITUDE50.97° S

LONGITUDE129.67° E

ALTITUDE433.1 KM

ORBITAL SPEED27,555 KM/H

GROUND TRACK7.17 KM/S

ORBIT PERIOD93.1 MIN

HORIZON RADIUS2,285 KM

TRACKRESOLVING

EQUATOR N'BOUND—

SUNLIGHTIN SHADOW

FIX TIME2026-10-12 12:19:40Z

The shaded ellipse is the horizon footprint: stand anywhere inside it and the station is above your skyline right now. Its radius is worked out from the altitude in this fix — 2,285 km at the moment, so it grows and shrinks as the station does. Orbit period and ground-track speed come from the same fix rather than from a stored figure; the track direction is read from two consecutive polls, which is why it takes a few seconds to resolve after the page loads, and the equator time assumes a circular orbit at the published 51.64° inclination, so treat it as approximate. The marker pulses only while the five-second poll is landing: a still, grey marker means the link has gone quiet and the fix under it has stopped moving. Naming the country or ocean underneath would need a geocoder, and next-pass times need the full orbital element set — neither is guessed here.

Near-Earth objects passing today2 TRACKED

NEAR-EARTH TRAFFIC

SYS-03/NEO

2 TRACKED

Near-Earth objects making their closest approach today, ordered by miss distance.
Object	Approach	Diameter	Miss distance	Lunar dist.	Velocity	Class
164207 Cardea (2004 GU9)	2026-Oct-12	154–344 m	29,671,918 km	77.19 LD	26,375 km/h	PHA
2015 XK55	2026-Oct-12	33–75 m	51,746,936 km	134.62 LD	55,420 km/h	ROUTINE

One lunar distance is 384,400 km, the Moon’s mean orbit. Today’s closest pass is 77.19 LD. One of them carries the PHA label. That is an orbital classification — wider than roughly 140 m and capable of passing within 0.05 AU — not a prediction. Nothing on this list is on an impact course.

CLOSE APPROACHES · TO SCALE BY DISTANCE

2 OBJECTS

The closest of these is 164207 Cardea (2004 GU9), at 77.2 lunar distances — 77 times further away than the Moon. Objects marked in red are classified potentially hazardous, which is a statement about size and orbit rather than about this pass.

DISTANCE TO SCALE ON A SQUARE-ROOT AXIS · DOT SIZE RANKS ESTIMATED DIAMETER, NOT TO SCALE · 2 BEYOND 64 LD NOT PLOTTED

2 tracked near-Earth objects make their closest approach today, the nearest of them 164207 Cardea (2004 GU9) at 77.19 lunar distances. Nothing on the list is on a collision course; close approaches are routine, and these are the ordinary traffic of the inner solar system.

Where this data comes from6 FEEDS

The International Space Station was last fixed at 50.97° S, 129.67° E — at high southern latitudes — 433 km up and moving at 27,555 km/h, timestamped 2026-10-12 12:19:40Z. It laps the planet every 92 minutes, so that fix is already behind; the globe on this page re-reads the position every five seconds.

Coastlines, borders and place names on the globe are Natural Earth, which is public domain. Positions come from a live feed and are reported as received; the ground track is propagated from the current fix rather than from a full orbital element set, so treat it as a good line and not as a pass prediction.

Everything above is real. The game is not — it is a gravity-flight sim built on the same orbital mechanics.GET IT ON GOOGLE PLAY — FREE

Standing questions

Can I see the ISS from where I am right now?: Only when three things are true at once: the station is above your local horizon, the station is in sunlight, and your own sky is dark. It carries no light you could see from the ground — it is visible purely because it reflects sunlight — which is why passes cluster in the couple of hours after sunset and before sunrise, when you are already in darkness but the station, four hundred-odd kilometres up, is still catching the Sun. The observer panel on this page checks all three for your location if you ask it to: it measures your coordinates against the station's current sub-point and horizon footprint, works out how far above your horizon it sits and which compass bearing to look along, reads the feed's own sunlit-or-eclipsed flag, and computes the Sun's height in your sky. The only judgement call in there is ours and is labelled as ours: below about ten degrees of elevation the panel calls the station obstructed, because that low down it is behind trees and rooflines. It answers for the present moment only. Predicting when the station will next come over you needs its full orbital element set propagated forward, which NASA's Spot The Station does.
Where is the ISS right now?: The International Space Station was at 50.97° S, 129.67° E, 433 km above sea level and travelling 27,555 km/h as of 2026-10-12 12:19:40Z. It completes an orbit roughly every 92 minutes and covers about 7.7 km every second, so any single position is only good for a few seconds. The globe on this page refreshes every five seconds from the same public feed, names the nearest populated place so the position means something, and draws the horizon footprint — the patch of ground with line of sight to the station at that instant — at the radius the altitude in the current fix gives rather than at a fixed size.
What is the Kp index?: Kp — the planetary K-index — is a 0 to 9 scale of how much the solar wind is disturbing Earth's magnetic field, averaged over three hours across a global network of magnetometers. 0 to 3 is quiet, 4 is active, and 5 or above is a geomagnetic storm, the point at which aurora becomes visible well outside the polar regions. The current reading is 1.33, which is quiet. Aurora should stay inside the polar circle tonight.
How far south does the aurora reach at this Kp?: Aurora sits on an oval centred on the geomagnetic pole, not the geographic one, and the oval reaches progressively lower geomagnetic latitudes as Kp rises — that relationship is published by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center as a table of viewing latitudes, running from about 66.5 degrees geomagnetic at Kp 0 down to about 48.1 degrees at Kp 9. Your geomagnetic latitude is not the number on a map: the dipole is tilted, which is why northern Britain sees aurora that the same geographic latitude across the Pacific does not. The observer panel on this page converts your coordinates to geomagnetic latitude and compares them against the edge for the current Kp, then prints the gap in degrees so you can weigh it yourself. That is a comparison against a published table rather than a forecast, it is either side of the line rather than a probability, and it accounts for neither cloud nor moonlight nor streetlights — NOAA's own 30-minute aurora forecast is the authority on whether anything will actually appear.
Is an asteroid going to hit Earth?: No. NASA states that no known asteroid poses a significant risk of impact for the next hundred years — its Sentry system continuously screens every catalogued object for impact risk, and nothing on the current list rates a concern. Objects do pass inside the Moon's distance routinely, which is what the close-approach panel on this page is listing. The 'potentially hazardous' label applied to some of them describes orbital geometry — an object large enough to matter that can pass within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth's orbit — not an incoming impact.