Satellites you can see with the naked eye

A satellite is on this page when the site's brightness model says it can reach magnitude 4.0, the limit of a visible pass, straight overhead and half lit at the low end of its orbit, from the Standard magnitude the field publishes for it. The list follows that rule and no hand-picked flag, so it changes when a Standard magnitude or an orbit does. Every one of these has visible passes on each city's page.

  1. International Space StationSpace stationOperating

    Standard magnitude -1.8, the brightest in this list, about 400 km up, with a crew of up to seven aboard since November 2000.

  2. Tiangong Space StationSpace stationOperating

    Standard magnitude 0.0 at about 380 km: China's station of three modules, with a crew of three aboard since June 2022.

  3. Hubble Space TelescopeSpace telescopeOperating

    Standard magnitude 2.2 at about 465 km: a 2.4 m mirror in orbit since April 1990, seeing from the ultraviolet to the infrared.

  4. TerraEarth-watching satelliteOperating

    Standard magnitude 2.7 at about 688 km: NASA's Earth observer launched in December 1999, 5,190 kg at launch.

  5. Fermi Gamma-ray Space TelescopeSpace telescopeOperating

    Standard magnitude 5.2, but only 488 km up, where it reaches 3.6 straight overhead: a gamma-ray telescope in orbit since June 2008.

  6. BlueWalker 3Communications satelliteOperating

    Standard magnitude 3.5 at about 443 km: AST SpaceMobile's prototype for reaching ordinary phones from orbit, with a 64 m² array, launched in September 2022.

  7. EnvisatEarth-watching satellite

    Standard magnitude 3.7 at about 761 km: ESA's eight-tonne Earth observer, whose mission ended on 8 April 2012, still crossing the sky.

  8. AquaEarth-watching satelliteOperating

    Standard magnitude 4.7 at about 685 km: NASA's satellite of the Earth's water cycle, launched in May 2002 and still operating.

  9. Suomi National Polar-orbiting PartnershipEarth-watching satelliteOperating

    Standard magnitude 4.2 at about 825 km: NOAA's and NASA's polar weather satellite of October 2011, the one behind the night-lights maps.

  10. Soil Moisture Active PassiveEarth-watching satellite

    Standard magnitude 4.0 at about 681 km: NASA's soil-moisture mapper with its 6 m mesh antenna, launched in January 2015.

  11. Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2Earth-watching satelliteOperating

    Standard magnitude 3.7 at about 630 km: JAXA's radar satellite, which sees the ground day and night and in any weather, launched in May 2014.

Whether each one is operating was read from the catalogue on Nov 9, 2026, 8:17 PM UTC. The names and facts of the satellites Orbinauts has not written about are GCAT’s, and so is whether a satellite is operating, except where Orbinauts writes when its mission ended. GCAT is Jonathan McDowell’s general catalogue, licensed CC BY 4.0.