- Pioneer
- NORAD 5
- 1958-002B
- Medium Earth orbit
Current orbit
View on live mapOrbit began over the Pacific Ocean
Orbit ends over the Pacific Ocean
Sunlit since
Enters the Earth’s shadow
In view from you
Nobody watches Vanguard 1 go over, but a receiver still asks whether it is above the horizon. Say where you are and this card answers.
Your position is rounded to about a kilometre and sent only to the Orbinauts API, to find the pass.
Even at its closest, Vanguard 1 is too faint to see with the naked eye from anywhere on Earth, so no city page carries pass times for it.
Seeing it
There is nothing to go outside for: it is too faint for the naked eye. It is still up there all the same, going round as it has since it was launched.
Timeline
- Launch
Launched on Vanguard from Cape Canaveral. Source
- End of mission
Its mission ended.
Summary
Over Botswana LIVE
Where is Vanguard 1?
At 3:03:50 AM UTC Vanguard 1 was over Botswana (25.3° S, 21° E), 3,818 km up, moving at 5.65 km/s and in sunlight.
What is Vanguard 1?
One of the pioneers of spaceflight in medium Earth orbit, in space since Mar 17, 1958; its mission ended in 1964.
Can I see Vanguard 1?
No, not with the naked eye: even at its closest, Vanguard 1 is too faint to see from anywhere on Earth; what it is now is a relic of the first years in orbit.
General
- Launched
- Ended
- Rocket
- Vanguard
- Remembered for
- Being the first satellite powered by solar cells, and the oldest human-made object still in orbit
- Operator
- The US Naval Research Laboratory, which built it and ran Project Vanguard
- Size
- a sphere 0.15 m across
- Mass
- 1.5 kg
- Typical altitude
- 653 to 3,817 km
- Speed
- about 5.65 to 8.19 km/s (20,300 to 29,500 km/h)
Latest orbital data
- Position received
- 3:03 AM UTC
- Station time (UTC)
- 3:03 AM UTC
- Latitude / longitude
- 25.3° S, 21° E
- Altitude
- 3,818 km
- Speed
- 5.65 km/s (20,347 km/h)
- Course
- south-east
- Light
- In sunlight until 4:19 AM UTC
- Inclination
- 34.2°
- Orbital period
- 132.6 minutes
- Orbits per day
- 10.86
- This orbit
- 653 to 3,822 km
- In shadow
- 37 minutes of each orbit
- In view from
- Within 4,670 km of the point below it
- Elements epoch
- Nov 2, 2026, 3:39 AM, 23 hours old
- Source
- Position from Space-Track orbital elements of Nov 2, 2026, 3:39 AM, 23 hours old.
No operator publishes an ephemeris for Vanguard 1, so every position here comes from its orbital elements.
In orbit
- Close approaches
- No close approach to Vanguard 1 has been reported publicly in the past thirty days.
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, 3:39 AM, 23 hours old.
{
"OBJECT_NAME": "VANGUARD 1",
"OBJECT_ID": "1958-002B",
"EPOCH": "2026-11-02T03:39:04.665312",
"MEAN_MOTION": 10.86089575,
"ECCENTRICITY": 0.1839145,
"INCLINATION": 34.244,
"RA_OF_ASC_NODE": 248.4931,
"ARG_OF_PERICENTER": 40.6256,
"MEAN_ANOMALY": 331.7947,
"EPHEMERIS_TYPE": 0,
"CLASSIFICATION_TYPE": "U",
"NORAD_CAT_ID": 5,
"ELEMENT_SET_NO": 999,
"REV_AT_EPOCH": 45828,
"BSTAR": 0.00047758,
"MEAN_MOTION_DOT": 0.00000358,
"MEAN_MOTION_DDOT": 0
}