NASA broadcasts live 24/7 from cameras mounted on the International Space Station — streaming Earth from 420km up, right now. Watch continents drift past, sunrises every 45 minutes, and auroras from above. When the ISS enters Earth's shadow the feed goes dark — part of the experience.
OrbitalNodes.ai tracks the ISS in real time using live telemetry and SGP4 orbital propagation. We show its exact position on a 3D globe, predict when it will next pass over your location, and give you plain-English directions like "Look Northwest, halfway up the sky" so you know exactly where to point your eyes.
📡 WATCH NASA LIVE FEED ↓Check our tracker for next pass times from your location. The ISS looks like a very bright, steady star moving quickly across the sky — it crosses from horizon to horizon in about 4 minutes. Best visibility is during twilight, and our site tells you exactly which direction to look.
The ISS can reach magnitude −5.9, making it the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. It's brighter than Venus and easily visible from cities, even with significant light pollution. You don't need binoculars or a telescope.
The ISS typically hosts 6-7 crew members from NASA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos on rotating missions lasting about 6 months. Our tracker shows the station's real-time position — the crew sees a sunrise every 45 minutes as they orbit Earth 16 times a day.
Not usually — the sky is too bright. The ISS is only visible during twilight when the sky is dark enough to see it but the station is still in direct sunlight. This creates a viewing window of roughly 30-60 minutes after sunset and before sunrise.
Since November 2, 2000 — over 25 years of continuous human presence in space. More than 270 people from 21 countries have visited. The station has hosted hundreds of scientific experiments and serves as a testbed for long-duration spaceflight technology needed for future missions to the Moon and Mars.
You can, but it's harder than most people expect. The ISS moves so fast that manual tracking through a telescope is nearly impossible — by the time you've centred it in the eyepiece, it's moved. Binoculars are actually better for casual viewing and can reveal a faint cross or plus shape when held steady. For detailed images of the solar panels and modules, astrophotographers use motorised mounts that can track the station automatically. With the naked eye the ISS simply looks like a very bright, fast-moving star.
The ISS enters Earth's shadow — it's no longer in direct sunlight so has nothing to reflect. This often happens toward the end of a pass as the station dips into the shadow cone. It can be quite dramatic watching a bright object simply fade out and vanish in seconds. OrbitalNodes shows you exactly when this will happen during each pass.
Very fast — it crosses from horizon to horizon in about 4-6 minutes for a high-elevation pass. At 27,600 km/h it covers roughly 8km every second. You can see it move against the stars in real time, which is one of the things that makes it so satisfying to spot. It moves noticeably faster than any aircraft.
OrbitalSolar.ai tracks orbital mirrors including Earendil-1, which will share LEO with the ISS. How does EARENDIL-1 compare in brightness? OrbitalSolar.ai →