International Space Station

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Link to this page

https://orbinauts.com/satellites/iss

  • Space station
  • ISS
  • NORAD 25544
  • 1998-067-A
  • Low Earth orbit
  • Naked-eye

Current orbit

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

Orbit began over the Pacific Ocean

Orbit ends over the Pacific Ocean

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:

  • London
  • New York City
  • SydneyNo visible pass in the next 10 days

How to see it

It crosses the sky as a steady point of light, as bright as Venus, moving far faster than an aircraft and never blinking. A pass lasts up to about six minutes from one horizon to the other, and the best ones come in the hour or two after sunset or before sunrise, while the sky is dark and the station overhead is still in sunlight. It can be seen as far north and south as about 64°, with no telescope and no binoculars.

Passes over: London, New York City, Madrid, Mexico City, Delhi, Tokyo, São Paulo, Sydney, every city

Altitude

410 km415 km420 km425 km430 km435 km
the ISS, one reading a day from Sep 16, 2025 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 Proton from Baikonur. Source

  2. Milestone

    The first crew, Expedition 1, arrived and moved in. Source

  3. Milestone

    The station as it was first designed was finished, with the last of the Space Shuttle flights that built it. Source

  4. MilestoneStill to come

    NASA and its partners plan to bring the station down into a remote part of the ocean at the end of its useful life. Source

In the news

All news

Size

the ISS, 109 m by 73 m, drawn to scale over a football pitch.
  • ISS
  • Football pitch, 105 by 68 m

Summary

Over the Indian Ocean LIVE

Where is the ISS?

At 3:01:18 AM UTC the ISS was over the Indian Ocean (50.7° S, 138.6° E), 436 km up, moving at 7.65 km/s and in sunlight.

What is the ISS?

A space station in low Earth orbit, in space since Nov 20, 1998 and crewed without interruption since Nov 2, 2000.

Can I see the ISS tonight?

Yes: the ISS 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

The International Space Station seen from Space Shuttle Atlantis after undocking, its solar arrays spread over the Earth below.
Photograph: NASA (public domain)
Launched
Rocket
Proton
Crewed without interruption since
Size
109 m across the solar arrays by 73 m of modules
Crew capacity
7 people
Air
Oxygen is made by splitting water with electricity, and about nine tenths of the water aboard is recovered and used again.
Operator
NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA and CSA
Power
75 to 90 kW from its solar arrays
Spacecraft attached at once
8
Amateur radio
145.8, 145.825, and 437.8 MHz, the downlinks anyone on the ground can listen to
Mass
about 420 t
Typical altitude
400 to 420 km
Speed
about 7.66 km/s (27,600 km/h)

Latest orbital data

Position received
3:01 AM UTC
Station time (UTC)
3:01 AM UTC
Latitude / longitude
50.7° S, 138.6° E
Altitude
436 km
Speed
7.65 km/s (27,540 km/h)
Course
east
Light
In sunlight until 3:26 AM UTC
Inclination
51.6°
Orbital period
93 minutes
Orbits per day
15.49
This orbit
415 to 425 km
In shadow
34 minutes of each orbit
In view from
Within 1,430 km of the point below it
Elements epoch
Nov 2, 2026, 10:25 AM, 16 hours old
Source
Position from NASA’s ephemeris issued Nov 2, 2026, 3:17 PM, 11 hours old.

Who’s on board the ISS

The people living and working on the station today, and how long each has been up there.

7 people on board right now

Arrived Jul 14, 2026

on Soyuz MS-29 · 111 days ago

  1. Pyotr Dubrov

    Roscosmos · Russia

    Commander

    111 days on board

    Photograph: NASA / Robert Markowitz (public domain)

  2. Anna Kikina

    Roscosmos · Russia

    Flight Engineer

    111 days on board

    Photograph: NASA / Robert Markowitz (public domain)

  3. Anil Menon

    NASA · United States

    Flight Engineer

    111 days on board

    Photograph: NASA / James Blair (public domain)

Arrived Oct 1, 2026

on Crew-13 · 32 days ago

  1. Jessica Watkins

    NASA · United States

    Flight Engineer

    32 days on board

    Photograph: NASA / Bill Ingalls (public domain)

  2. Luke Delaney

    NASA · United States

    Flight Engineer

    32 days on board

    Photograph: NASA / Josh Valcarcel (public domain)

  3. Joshua Kutryk

    CSA · Canada

    Flight Engineer

    32 days on board

    Photograph: NASA / Bill Stafford (public domain)

  4. Sergey Teteryatnikov

    Roscosmos · Russia

    Flight Engineer

    32 days on board

    No official profile to link yet.

    Photograph: NASA / Bill Stafford (public domain)

Crew from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2, read every 6 hours, last on Nov 2, 2026, 7:39 PM UTC. Days on board count from the day each person’s spacecraft docked. Portraits are the agencies’ own, credited on each.

In orbit

Close approaches
No close approach to the ISS has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
Losing to drag
the ISS is falling about 41 m a day, read from the last 37 days of samples.

From Space-Track’s public conjunction messages; the latest report was issued Nov 2, 2026, 1:53 PM, 12 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

SatelliteTypical altitudeOrbital periodMassCrew capacityPressurised modulesIn space since
ISS400 to 420 km93 minutesabout 420 t7—1998
Tiangong380 to 400 km92 minutesabout 100 t332021

Data and API

The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 2, 2026, 10:25 AM, 16 hours old.

{
  "OBJECT_NAME": "ISS (ZARYA)",
  "OBJECT_ID": "1998-067A",
  "EPOCH": "2026-11-02T10:25:21.580320",
  "MEAN_MOTION": 15.49150046,
  "ECCENTRICITY": 0.0007139,
  "INCLINATION": 51.6332,
  "RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 335.9757,
  "ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 339.3739,
  "MEAN_ANOMALY": 20.6961,
  "EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
  "CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
  "NORAD_CAT_ID": 25544,
  "ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
  "REV_AT_EPOCH": 59318,
  "BSTAR": 0.00010508,
  "MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00005374,
  "MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}

NASA ephemeris

Issued Nov 2, 2026, 3:17 PM, 11 hours old, covering Nov 2, 2026, 12:00 PM to Nov 17, 2026, 12:00 PM.