- Earth-watching satellite
- NORAD 25994
- 1999-068A
- Low Earth orbit
- Naked-eye
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over Mongolia
Orbit ends over Kazakhstan
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:
- London
- 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: London, Moscow, Delhi, Tokyo, Sydney, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Johannesburg, every city
Altitude
One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Atlas IIAS from Vandenberg. Source
Summary
Over the Arctic Ocean LIVE
Where is Terra?
At 4:10:19 AM UTC Terra was over the Arctic Ocean (80.1° N, 166.3° W), 701 km up, moving at 7.51 km/s and in sunlight.
What is Terra?
A satellite that watches the Earth in low Earth orbit, in space since Dec 18, 1999.
Can I see Terra tonight?
Yes: Terra 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
- Atlas IIAS
- Watches
- The whole Earth: its land, its oceans and its atmosphere, measured at the same moment by five instruments
- Full picture of the Earth
- Every 1 to 2 days, with its MODIS instrument
- Operator
- NASA, the flagship of its Earth Observing System
- Mass
- about 5.2 t
- Typical altitude
- 688 to 691 km
- Speed
- about 7.51 km/s (27,000 km/h)
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 4:10 AM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 4:10 AM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 80.1° N, 166.3° W
- Altitude
- 701 km
- Speed
- 7.51 km/s (27,047 km/h)
- Course
- north-west
- Light
- In sunlight until 5:16 AM UTC
- Inclination
- 97.9°
- Orbital period
- 98.5 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 14.61
- This orbit
- 684 to 689 km
- In shadow
- 28 minutes of each orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,940 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 2, 2026, 11:57 AM, 15 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 11:57 AM, 16 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for Terra, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to Terra has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
- Losing to drag
- Terra 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, 11:57 AM, 15 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "TERRA",
"OBJECT_ID": "1999-068A",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-02T11:57:35.554752",
"MEAN_MOTION": 14.61187565,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.0003163,
"INCLINATION": 97.9285,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 350.4422,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 131.948,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 0.7826,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 25994,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 42980,
"BSTAR": 0.000047721,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000191,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}