Tiangong — China's space station — orbits Earth every 92 minutes at 390km altitude, visible to the naked eye as a bright red-tinged star crossing the sky. It's one of the brightest objects in the night sky and passes over most of the world's population.
OrbitalNodes.ai tracks Tiangong in real time using live TLE data and SGP4 orbital propagation — the same method used by professional space agencies. We show its current position on a live 3D globe and predict exactly when it will next pass over your location.
🛰 TRACK TIANGONG LIVEUse OrbitalNodes to get exact pass times for your location — Tiangong passes over most of the world's population and is visible from everywhere between approximately 43°N and 43°S latitude — a narrower footprint than the ISS (51.6°). It looks like a very bright reddish-orange star moving steadily across the sky during twilight. No telescope or binoculars needed. Passes happen several times per week and last 3-6 minutes.
Tiangong reaches magnitude −3 at peak — slightly dimmer than the ISS (which peaks at −5.9) but still easily one of the brightest objects in the night sky. At its best it outshines Jupiter and rivals Venus. The main difference in appearance is a subtle reddish-orange tint compared to the ISS's bluer-white colour, which comes from the different surface materials and solar panel coatings.
Tiangong (meaning "Heavenly Palace") is China's permanent space station, completed in 2022 after a decade of development. It consists of three modules: Tianhe (core living and control module), Wentian (science lab, launched July 2022), and Mengtian (science lab, launched October 2022). The station hosts a permanent crew of three taikonauts rotating every six months, and is planned to operate until at least 2035.
Yes — but Tiangong's 41.5° orbital inclination means it only passes over locations between approximately 43°N and 43°S. That includes the continental US, southern Europe (south of the Alps), all of Australia, China, India, Japan, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Locations further north — most of the UK, Canada, Scandinavia, northern Russia — will see Tiangong low on the southern horizon at best, and not at all from the far north. This is a notable difference from the ISS, which reaches 51.6° inclination. OrbitalNodes calculates pass times for your exact coordinates.
Tiangong is smaller — about 70 tonnes and 100m span with solar arrays compared to the ISS at 420 tonnes and 109m. Tiangong hosts 3 crew versus up to 7 on the ISS. It orbits about 30km lower (390km vs 420km). Tiangong has a T-shaped configuration — one core module with two lab modules at right angles — versus the ISS's long linear truss. Tiangong's inclination is 41.5°, not 51.6° like the ISS — so Tiangong stays further south and is less visible from high-latitude locations.
The reddish tint comes from Tiangong's solar panel design and surface coatings which reflect sunlight differently to the ISS. It's subtle — both stations appear as bright white-yellow lights to most observers — but under good conditions with binoculars the colour difference is noticeable. The orange tint is also more apparent when Tiangong is lower on the horizon where atmospheric scattering adds to the warm colour.
China has no plans to join the ISS and Tiangong is a fully independent station. The ISS is planned for deorbit around 2030, after which Tiangong and planned US commercial stations would be the only crewed stations in orbit. China has invited international scientists to conduct experiments on Tiangong and several ESA astronauts have trained for potential missions, though none have flown yet.
At 27,600 km/h Tiangong covers the sky in about the same time as the ISS — typically 4-6 minutes from horizon to horizon for a high-elevation pass. You can see it move against the stars in real time, faster than any aircraft. At peak brightness on a near-overhead pass it moves roughly one fist-width per 10-15 seconds.
OrbitalNodes tracks both Tiangong and the ISS simultaneously — see both space stations on the live globe and get pass predictions for both from your location. The Best Pass This Week feature compares both and highlights whichever gives the most spectacular viewing opportunity.
China has its own space mirror history — the 2018 Chengdu artificial moon proposal. Read about the Chengdu proposal →