- Earth-watching satellite
- NORAD 27424
- 2002-022A
- Low Earth orbit
- Naked-eye
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over the Barents Sea
Orbit ends over the Barents Sea
In the Earth’s shadow since
Back in sunlight
Passes over you
Say where you are and your own next passes appear here, the first drawn across your sky.
Your position is rounded to about a kilometre and sent only to the Orbinauts API, to find the pass.
Meanwhile, the next visible pass over three cities:
How to see it
It crosses the sky as a steady point of light, no brighter than a faint star, a few minutes from one horizon to the other and never blinking. Its orbit keeps it over the line between day and night, so the hour after sunset and the hour before sunrise are the times to look, under as dark a sky as you can find. It can be seen from anywhere on Earth.
Passes over: Madrid, Warsaw, Karachi, Manila, Wellington, Toronto, Santiago, Lagos, every city
Altitude
One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Delta II from Vandenberg. Source
Summary
Over Nigeria LIVE
Where is Aqua?
At 3:01:20 AM UTC Aqua was over Nigeria (12.9° N, 13.5° E), 688 km up, moving at 7.51 km/s and in the Earth’s shadow.
What is Aqua?
A satellite that watches the Earth in low Earth orbit, in space since May 4, 2002.
Can I see Aqua tonight?
Yes: Aqua can be seen with the naked eye when it passes over you in a dark sky, after dusk or before dawn, as a steady light that crosses the sky in a few minutes.
General
- Launched
- Rocket
- Delta II
- Watches
- The Earth’s water: evaporation from the oceans, water vapour, clouds, rain, sea ice and snow, with four of its six instruments still at work
- Full picture of the Earth
- Every 1 to 2 days, with its MODIS instrument
- Operator
- NASA, Terra’s afternoon twin in its Earth Observing System
- Mass
- about 2.9 t
- Typical altitude
- 685 to 687 km
- Speed
- about 7.51 km/s (27,000 km/h)
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 3:01 AM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 3:01 AM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 12.9° N, 13.5° E
- Altitude
- 688 km
- Speed
- 7.51 km/s (27,050 km/h)
- Course
- south
- Light
- In the Earth’s shadow until 3:08 AM UTC
- Inclination
- 98.4°
- Orbital period
- 98.5 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 14.62
- This orbit
- 682 to 684 km
- In shadow
- 15 minutes of each orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,920 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 2, 2026, 1:39 PM, 13 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 1:39 PM, 13 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for Aqua, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to Aqua has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
- Losing to drag
- Aqua is falling about 4 m a day, read from the last 48 days of samples.
From Space-Track’s public conjunction messages; the latest report was issued Nov 2, 2026, 1:53 PM, 13 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 2, 2026, 1:39 PM, 13 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "AQUA",
"OBJECT_ID": "2002-022A",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-02T13:39:06.931008",
"MEAN_MOTION": 14.62259553,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.0000886,
"INCLINATION": 98.4476,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 278.7564,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 100.4232,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 15.5469,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 27424,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 30349,
"BSTAR": 0.00010235,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000466,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}