- Military
- NORAD 10787
- 1978-038A
- Geostationary
Current orbit
View on live mapOne orbit takes a day, as long as the Earth takes to turn, so OPS 8790 keeps above 152.5° W of the equator and never crosses the sky.
It never rises or sets
OPS 8790 turns with the Earth, standing over one longitude of the equator. From anywhere it can be seen at all it is up day and night, in the same direction, so there is no pass to wait for.
No brightness has been published for OPS 8790, so it is not a naked-eye satellite and no city page carries pass times for it. Nothing here estimates one.
Seeing it
There is nothing to wait for: it never crosses the sky. From the half of the Earth it stands over it keeps the same point day and night, and from the other half it never rises at all.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched, on the day GCAT records. Source
Summary
Over the Pacific Ocean LIVE
Where is OPS 8790?
At 7:03:45 PM UTC OPS 8790 was over the Pacific Ocean (1.9° S, 152.5° W), 35,691 km up, standing over one longitude of the equator and in sunlight.
What is OPS 8790?
A satellite in geostationary orbit, in space since Apr 7, 1978.
Can I see OPS 8790?
No, not with the naked eye, and it never crosses the sky: OPS 8790 stands over 152.5° W of the equator.
General
- Operator
- National Reconnaissance Office
- State
- United States of America
- Built by
- TRW Inc.
- Military
- Yes: a defence organisation flies it
- Launched
- Mass
- 700 kg
- Operating
- No: its regular operations have ended
- Orbit class
- Geostationary
From GCAT, Jonathan McDowell’s general catalogue, licensed CC BY 4.0: the operator, the state, the manufacturer, that a defence organisation flies it, the launch day, the mass, and whether it is operating. The orbit class is read from its current elements.
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 7:03 PM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 7:03 PM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 1.9° S, 152.5° W
- Altitude
- 35,691 km
- Speed
- 3.08 km/s (11,088 km/h)
- Course
- Stands over 152.5° W
- Light
- In sunlight
- Inclination
- 3.4°
- Orbital period
- 1,433.1 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 1
- This orbit
- 35,637 to 35,821 km
- In view from
- Within 7,940 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 8, 2026, 6:49 AM, 12 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 8, 2026, 6:49 AM, 12 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for OPS 8790, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to OPS 8790 has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
From Space-Track’s public conjunction messages; the latest report was issued Nov 8, 2026, 1:11 PM, 3 hours old. Only approaches serious enough to be reported publicly are listed: within three days and, for two bodies near the Earth, closer than a kilometre with a chance of a collision above 1 in 10,000, the level at which NASA moves the ISS.
Data and API
The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 8, 2026, 6:49 AM, 12 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "OPS 8790",
"OBJECT_ID": "1978-038A",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-08T06:49:02.610336",
"MEAN_MOTION": 1.00482521,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.00218554,
"INCLINATION": 3.4147,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 327.2844,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 281.4006,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 108.5081,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 10787,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 2671,
"BSTAR": 0,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000124,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}