- Space station
- Tiangong
- NORAD 48274
- 2021-035A
- 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 City
- Sydney
How to see it
It crosses the sky as a steady point of light, as bright as Jupiter, 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 53°, with no telescope and no binoculars.
Passes over: Tokyo, Delhi, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Madrid, Cairo, São Paulo, Sydney, every city
Altitude
One reading a day, worked out from the elements Space-Track publishes.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Long March 5B from Wenchang. Source
- Milestone
The first crew, Shenzhou-12, docked with Tianhe and moved in. Source
- Milestone
Mengtian swung round to its side port and the T-shaped station was complete. Source
- Manoeuvre
Between Friday, Oct 23 at 8:52 AM UTC and Sunday, Oct 25 at 1:04 PM UTC, Tiangong raised its orbit by about 140 m.
Size
- Tiangong
- Football pitch, 105 by 68 m
Summary
Over the Pacific Ocean LIVE
Where is Tiangong?
At 3:02:14 AM UTC Tiangong was over the Pacific Ocean (33.9° N, 158.9° E), 388 km up, moving at 7.68 km/s and in sunlight.
What is Tiangong?
A space station in low Earth orbit, in space since Apr 29, 2021 and crewed without interruption since Jun 5, 2022.
Can I see Tiangong tonight?
Yes: Tiangong 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
- Long March 5B
- Crewed without interruption since
- Size
- 55 m across the solar arrays by 39 m of modules
- Crew capacity
- 3 people
- Pressurised modules
- 3
- Air
- Oxygen is made by splitting water with electricity; its operator says all of the oxygen and about 95% of the water are regenerated aboard.
- Operator
- China Manned Space Agency
- Power
- more than 80 kW from its solar arrays
- Docking ports
- 5
- Mass
- about 100 t
- Typical altitude
- 380 to 400 km
- Speed
- about 7.67 km/s (27,600 km/h)
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 3:02 AM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 3:02 AM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 33.9° N, 158.9° E
- Altitude
- 388 km
- Speed
- 7.68 km/s (27,652 km/h)
- Course
- north-east
- Light
- In sunlight until 3:17 AM UTC
- Inclination
- 41.5°
- Orbital period
- 92.2 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 15.61
- This orbit
- 383 to 389 km
- In shadow
- 35 minutes of each orbit
- In view from
- Within 1,310 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 2, 2026, 9:54 AM, 14 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 9:54 AM, 17 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for Tiangong, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
Who’s on board Tiangong
The people living and working on the station today, and how long each has been up there.
3 people on board right now
Arrived May 24, 2026
on Shenzhou 23 · 162 days ago
Zhu Yangzhu
CMSA · China
Commander
162 days on board
Lai Ka-ying
CMSA · China
Operator
162 days on board
No official profile to link yet.
Zhang Zhiyuan
CMSA · China
Operator
162 days on board
No official profile to link yet.
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.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to Tiangong has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
- Last manoeuvre
- Between Friday, Oct 23 at 8:52 AM UTC and Sunday, Oct 25 at 1:04 PM UTC, Tiangong raised its orbit by about 140 m.
- Losing to drag
- Tiangong is falling about 107 m a day, read from the last 35 days of samples.
From Space-Track’s public conjunction messages; the latest report was issued Nov 2, 2026, 1:53 PM, 10 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.
Beside the others
| Satellite | Typical altitude | Orbital period | Mass | Crew capacity | Pressurised modules | In space since |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiangong | 380 to 400 km | 92 minutes | about 100 t | 3 | 3 | 2021 |
| ISS | 400 to 420 km | 93 minutes | about 420 t | 7 | — | 1998 |
Data and API
The current elements from Space-Track as an OMM object, epoch Nov 2, 2026, 9:54 AM, 14 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "CSS (TIANHE-1)",
"OBJECT_ID": "2021-035A",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-02T09:54:28.085184",
"MEAN_MOTION": 15.61298938,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.0004189,
"INCLINATION": 41.4677,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 202.1822,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 247.3799,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 112.6597,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 48274,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 31475,
"BSTAR": 0.00011564,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00009783,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}