- Space telescope
- Cheops
- NORAD 44874
- 2019-092B
- Low Earth orbit
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over Iran
Orbit ends over Egypt
In view from you
Nobody watches Cheops 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 Cheops, 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.
Altitude
One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Soyuz from Kourou. Source
Summary
Over the Pacific Ocean LIVE
Where is Cheops?
At 3:00:36 AM UTC Cheops was over the Pacific Ocean (25.6° S, 138° W), 704 km up, moving at 7.5 km/s and in sunlight.
What is Cheops?
A space telescope in low Earth orbit, in space since Dec 18, 2019.
Can I see Cheops?
No, not with the naked eye: no brightness has been published for Cheops, and nothing here estimates one; what people use is what it sees, which its operator publishes.
General
- Launched
- Rocket
- Soyuz
- Main mirror
- 0.3 m across
- Light it sees
- Visible and near-infrared light, from 0.33 to 1.1 µm
- Operator
- ESA and Switzerland, flown by a consortium led by the University of Bern from INTA’s operations centre in Torrejón de Ardoz, near Madrid
- Mass
- 280 kg
- Typical altitude
- 679 to 694 km
- Speed
- about 7.51 km/s (27,000 km/h)
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 3:00 AM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 3:00 AM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 25.6° S, 138° W
- Altitude
- 704 km
- Speed
- 7.5 km/s (26,996 km/h)
- Course
- south
- Light
- In sunlight
- Inclination
- 98.1°
- Orbital period
- 98.5 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 14.62
- This orbit
- 676 to 692 km
- In shadow
- None of this orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,950 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 2, 2026, 11:17 AM, 15 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 11:17 AM, 15 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for Cheops, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to Cheops has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
- Losing to drag
- Cheops is falling about 2 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.
Beside the others
| Satellite | Light it sees | Typical altitude | Main mirror | Mass | In space since |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheops | Visible and near-infrared light, from 0.33 to 1.1 µm | 679 to 694 km | 0.3 m | 280 kg | 2019 |
| Fermi | Gamma rays, from 8 keV to more than 300 GeV | 488 to 498 km | — | about 4.3 t | 2008 |
| Hubble | Ultraviolet, visible and infrared light | 465 to 480 km | 2.4 m | about 12.2 t | 1990 |
| XMM-Newton | X-rays, from 0.15 to 12 keV, and visible and ultraviolet light | 29,443 to 91,682 km | 0.7 m | about 3.8 t | 1999 |
| Chandra | X-rays, from 0.1 to 10 keV | 12,186 to 136,630 km | 1.2 m | about 4.8 t | 1999 |
Data and API
The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 2, 2026, 11:17 AM, 15 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "CHEOPS",
"OBJECT_ID": "2019-092B",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-02T11:17:24.467712",
"MEAN_MOTION": 14.62038167,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.0011194,
"INCLINATION": 98.1477,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 132.8337,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 32.4289,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 327.7599,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 44874,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 36610,
"BSTAR": 0.000040119,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000154,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}