Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

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Link to this page

https://orbinauts.com/satellites/fermi

  • Space telescope
  • Fermi
  • NORAD 33053
  • 2008-029A
  • Low Earth orbit
  • Naked-eye

Current orbit

Where Fermi is on the world map, with the orbit it is flying
View on live map

Orbit began over Ethiopia

Orbit ends over the Central African Republic

Sunlit since

Enters the Earth’s shadow

Past trackNext orbits

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:

  • LondonNo visible pass in the next 10 days
  • New York CityNo visible pass in the next 10 days
  • SydneyNo visible pass in the next 10 days

How to see it

It crosses the sky as a steady point of light, no brighter than a faint star, taking a few minutes from one horizon to the other and never blinking. Look in the dark hour after sunset or before sunrise, when the sky is dark and it is still in sunlight, and away from street lights if you can. It can be seen as far north and south as about 39°.

Passes over: Miami, Mexico City, Bogotá, São Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai, Bangkok, Brisbane, every city

Altitude

490 km495 km500 km505 km
Fermi, one reading a day from Sep 16, 2026 to Nov 3, 2026. The band runs from the lowest point of the orbit to the highest; the line is the middle of it.

One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.

Timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched on Delta II from Cape Canaveral. Source

Summary

Over Australia LIVE

Where is Fermi?

At 3:00:42 AM UTC Fermi was over Australia (24.6° S, 124° E), 496 km up, moving at 7.62 km/s and in sunlight.

What is Fermi?

A space telescope in low Earth orbit, in space since Jun 11, 2008.

Can I see Fermi tonight?

Yes: Fermi 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

Fermi, still called GLAST, in a clean room in Florida before its launch in 2008: a foil-wrapped box of instruments on a copper-wrapped body, a folded solar panel at its side.
Photograph: NASA / Kim Shiflett (public domain)
Launched
Rocket
Delta II
Light it sees
Gamma rays, from 8 keV to more than 300 GeV
Operator
NASA, with the US Department of Energy and partners in five countries, flown from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Mass
about 4.3 t
Typical altitude
488 to 498 km
Speed
about 7.62 km/s (27,400 km/h)

Latest orbital data

Position received
3:00 AM UTC
Station time (UTC)
3:00 AM UTC
Latitude / longitude
24.6° S, 124° E
Altitude
496 km
Speed
7.62 km/s (27,425 km/h)
Course
east
Light
In sunlight until 3:31 AM UTC
Inclination
25.6°
Orbital period
94.5 minutes
Orbits per day
15.25
This orbit
491 to 502 km
In shadow
36 minutes of each orbit
In view from
Within 1,560 km of the point below it
Elements epoch
Nov 2, 2026, 8:37 AM, 18 hours old
Source
Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 8:37 AM, 18 hours old.

No operator publishes an ephemeris for Fermi, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.

In orbit

Close approaches
No close approach to Fermi has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
Losing to drag
Fermi is falling about 14 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.

See every close approach reported in orbit.

Beside the others

SatelliteLight it seesTypical altitudeMain mirrorMassIn space since
FermiGamma rays, from 8 keV to more than 300 GeV488 to 498 km—about 4.3 t2008
HubbleUltraviolet, visible and infrared light465 to 480 km2.4 mabout 12.2 t1990
CheopsVisible and near-infrared light, from 0.33 to 1.1 µm679 to 694 km0.3 m280 kg2019
XMM-NewtonX-rays, from 0.15 to 12 keV, and visible and ultraviolet light29,443 to 91,682 km0.7 mabout 3.8 t1999
ChandraX-rays, from 0.1 to 10 keV12,186 to 136,630 km1.2 mabout 4.8 t1999

Data and API

The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 2, 2026, 8:37 AM, 18 hours old.

{
  "OBJECT_NAME": "GLAST",
  "OBJECT_ID": "2008-029A",
  "EPOCH": "2026-11-02T08:37:32.064096",
  "MEAN_MOTION": 15.24572174,
  "ECCENTRICITY": 0.0008206,
  "INCLINATION": 25.5834,
  "RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 324.6213,
  "ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 155.278,
  "MEAN_ANOMALY": 204.8153,
  "EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
  "CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
  "NORAD_CAT_ID": 33053,
  "ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
  "REV_AT_EPOCH": 1679,
  "BSTAR": 0.000082979,
  "MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00002443,
  "MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}