- Earth-watching satellite
- SMAP
- NORAD 40376
- 2015-003A
- Low Earth orbit
- Naked-eye
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over the Arctic Ocean
Orbit ends over the Arctic Ocean
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, no brighter than a faint star, a few minutes from one horizon to the other and never blinking. Its orbit keeps it over the line between day and night, so the hour after sunset and the hour before sunrise are the times to look, under as dark a sky as you can find. It can be seen from anywhere on Earth.
Passes over: Amsterdam, Athens, Riyadh, Hanoi, Brisbane, Houston, Recife, Cape Town, every city
Altitude
One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Delta II from Vandenberg. Source
Summary
Over the Mozambique Channel LIVE
Where is SMAP?
At 3:01:19 AM UTC SMAP was over the Mozambique Channel (19° S, 41.8° E), 690 km up, moving at 7.51 km/s and in sunlight.
What is SMAP?
A satellite that watches the Earth in low Earth orbit, in space since Jan 31, 2015.
Can I see SMAP tonight?
Yes: SMAP 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
- Launched
- Rocket
- Delta II
- Watches
- The water in the top 5 cm of the soil and whether it is frozen or thawed, through cloud, day and night, by a radiometer under a spinning 6 m mesh antenna
- Full picture of the Earth
- Every 2 to 3 days
- Operator
- NASA, which flies it from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Mass
- 944 kg
- Typical altitude
- 681 to 683 km
- Speed
- about 7.51 km/s (27,000 km/h)
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 3:01 AM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 3:01 AM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 19° S, 41.8° E
- Altitude
- 690 km
- Speed
- 7.51 km/s (27,036 km/h)
- Course
- south
- Light
- In sunlight
- Inclination
- 98.1°
- Orbital period
- 98.4 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 14.63
- This orbit
- 678 to 680 km
- In shadow
- None of this orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,920 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 2, 2026, 11:20 AM, 15 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 11:20 AM, 15 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for SMAP, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to SMAP has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
- Losing to drag
- SMAP 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.
Data and API
The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 2, 2026, 11:20 AM, 15 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "SMAP",
"OBJECT_ID": "2015-003A",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-02T11:20:47.989824",
"MEAN_MOTION": 14.63401376,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.0001297,
"INCLINATION": 98.1308,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 311.636,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 86.849,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 273.286,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 40376,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 62784,
"BSTAR": 0.000050286,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000213,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}