Soil Moisture Active Passive

LIVE

Link to this page

https://orbinauts.com/satellites/smap

  • Earth-watching satellite
  • SMAP
  • NORAD 40376
  • 2015-003A
  • Low Earth orbit
  • Naked-eye

Current orbit

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

Orbit began over the Arctic Ocean

Orbit ends over the Arctic Ocean

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
  • Sydney

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

678 km679 km680 km681 km
SMAP, one reading a day from Sep 16, 2026 to Sep 18, 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 Vandenberg. Source

Summary

Over Baffin Bay LIVE

Where is SMAP?

At 8:06:05 PM UTC SMAP was over Baffin Bay (71.7° N, 57° W), 694 km up, moving at 7.52 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

The SMAP satellite in gold insulation, its antenna boom and folded mesh reflector on top, lowered onto a stand in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2014, engineers in white suits around it.
Photograph: NASA / JPL-Caltech (public domain)
Launched
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
8:06 PM UTC
Station time (UTC)
8:06 PM UTC
Latitude / longitude
71.7° N, 57° W
Altitude
694 km
Speed
7.52 km/s (27,058 km/h)
Course
north-west
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 1,930 km of the point below it
Elements epoch
Sep 18, 2026, 4:59 AM, 15 hours old
Source
Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Sep 18, 2026, 4:59 AM, 15 hours old.

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

In orbit

Close approaches
Close approaches to SMAP are not available right now. Try again in a few minutes.
Losing to drag
SMAP is falling about 1 m a day, read from the last 2 days of samples.

See every close approach reported in orbit.

Data and API

The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Sep 18, 2026, 4:59 AM, 15 hours old.

{
  "OBJECT_NAME": "SMAP",
  "OBJECT_ID": "2015-003A",
  "EPOCH": "2026-09-18T04:59:53.868768",
  "MEAN_MOTION": 14.63372521,
  "ECCENTRICITY": 0.00014573,
  "INCLINATION": 98.1317,
  "RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 267.0014,
  "ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 90.9824,
  "MEAN_ANOMALY": 269.1545,
  "EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
  "CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
  "NORAD_CAT_ID": 40376,
  "ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
  "REV_AT_EPOCH": 62122,
  "BSTAR": 0.000058952256,
  "MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000258,
  "MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}