- Space telescope
- NORAD 21578
- 1991-050E
- Low Earth orbit
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over the Barents Sea
Orbit ends over the Greenland Sea
Sunlit since
Enters the Earth’s shadow
In view from you
Nobody watches SARA go over, but a receiver still asks whether it is above the horizon. Say where you are and this card answers.
Your position is rounded to about a kilometre and sent only to the Orbinauts API, to find the pass.
No brightness has been published for SARA, 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 go outside for. It is far too faint for the naked eye, and catching it would take a telescope driven to follow a point crossing the sky in minutes. What is worth looking at is what it sends back.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched, on the day GCAT records. Source
Summary
Over the Pacific Ocean LIVE
Where is SARA?
At 4:41:22 PM UTC SARA was over the Pacific Ocean (10.2° S, 122.1° W), 701 km up, moving at 7.5 km/s and in sunlight.
What is SARA?
A space telescope in low Earth orbit, in space since Jul 17, 1991.
Can I see SARA?
No, not with the naked eye: no brightness has been published for SARA, and nothing here estimates one; what people use is what it sees, which its operator publishes.
General
- Operator
- ESIEESPACE, Ecole Sup. d'Ingenieurs en Electron. et Electrotechnique
- State
- French Republic
- Built by
- ESIEESPACE, Ecole Sup. d'Ingenieurs en Electron. et Electrotechnique
- What it is
- Space telescope
- Launched
- Mass
- 18 kg
- Operating
- No: its regular operations have ended
- Orbit class
- Low Earth orbit
From GCAT, Jonathan McDowell’s general catalogue, licensed CC BY 4.0: the operator, the state, the manufacturer, what it is for, the launch day, the mass, and whether it is operating. The orbit class is read from its current elements.
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 4:41 PM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 4:41 PM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 10.2° S, 122.1° W
- Altitude
- 701 km
- Speed
- 7.5 km/s (27,014 km/h)
- Course
- south
- Light
- In sunlight until 5:18 PM UTC
- Inclination
- 98.1°
- Orbital period
- 98.7 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 14.59
- This orbit
- 690 to 695 km
- In shadow
- 28 minutes of each orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,940 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 8, 2026, 2:46 AM, 13 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 8, 2026, 2:46 AM, 13 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for SARA, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to SARA 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.
Launched with
SARA shares its launch, 1991-050, with 8 other bodies the catalogue lists in orbit.
| Body | What it is |
|---|---|
| ERS 1 | Earth-watching satellite |
| OSCAR 22 (UOSAT 5) | Communications satellite |
| ORBCOMM-X | Communications satellite |
| TUBSAT A | Communications satellite |
| ARIANE 40 R/B | Rocket body |
| ERS 1 DEB | Debris |
| ERS 1 DEB | Debris |
| ERS 1 DEB | Debris |
Read from the international designators of the US catalogue: the year and the launch number every piece of one launch shares. A body that has come down is no longer listed.
Beside the others
| Satellite | Typical altitude | Orbital period | Mass | In space since |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SARA | 690 to 695 km | 99 minutes | 18 kg | 1991 |
| Cheops | 679 to 694 km | 98 minutes | 280 kg | 2019 |
| Fermi | 488 to 498 km | 94 minutes | about 4.3 t | 2008 |
| Hubble | 465 to 480 km | 94 minutes | about 12.2 t | 1990 |
| XMM-Newton | 29,443 to 91,682 km | 2,873 minutes | about 3.8 t | 1999 |
| Chandra | 12,186 to 136,630 km | 3,809 minutes | about 4.8 t | 1999 |
Data and API
The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 8, 2026, 2:46 AM, 13 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "SARA",
"OBJECT_ID": "1991-050E",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-08T02:46:26.762592",
"MEAN_MOTION": 14.59307153,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.00037115,
"INCLINATION": 98.0776,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 356.9898,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 82.4811,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 303.3384,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 21578,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 86730,
"BSTAR": 0.00018936996,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.0000085,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}