- Space telescope
- Fermi
- NORAD 33053
- 2008-029A
- Low Earth orbit
- Naked-eye
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over the Atlantic Ocean
Orbit ends over the Atlantic Ocean
Sunlit since
Enters the Earth’s shadow
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
One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Delta II from Cape Canaveral. Source
Summary
Over the Pacific Ocean LIVE
Where is Fermi?
At 8:06:03 PM UTC Fermi was over the Pacific Ocean (23.3° S, 88.8° W), 494 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
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- Launched
- 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
- 8:06 PM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 8:06 PM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 23.3° S, 88.8° W
- Altitude
- 494 km
- Speed
- 7.62 km/s (27,436 km/h)
- Course
- east
- Light
- In sunlight until 8:27 PM UTC
- Inclination
- 25.6°
- Orbital period
- 94.5 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 15.24
- This orbit
- 492 to 503 km
- In shadow
- 34 minutes of each orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,550 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Sep 18, 2026, 3:06 AM, 16 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Sep 18, 2026, 3:06 AM, 16 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for Fermi, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- Close approaches to Fermi are not available right now. Try again in a few minutes.
- Losing to drag
- Fermi is falling about 8 m a day, read from the last 2 days of samples.
Beside the others
| Satellite | Light it sees | Typical altitude | Main mirror | Mass | In space since |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Cheops | Visible and near-infrared light, from 0.33 to 1.1 µm | 679 to 694 km | 0.3 m | 280 kg | 2019 |
| 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 Sep 18, 2026, 3:06 AM, 16 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "GLAST",
"OBJECT_ID": "2008-029A",
"EPOCH": "2026-09-18T03:06:22.618080",
"MEAN_MOTION": 15.24365012,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.00078257,
"INCLINATION": 25.5823,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 278.9305,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 346.7187,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 13.3145,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 33053,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 988,
"BSTAR": 0.00010059101,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00002874,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}