The ultimate trip is happening 400 km above you.
Seven people are circling Earth at 28,000 km/h. Travel Gavel shows you exactly where the International Space Station is, live, every few seconds.
Locating the station…
Who’s up there right now
Everyone currently in orbit, across every spacecraft. Data updates whenever crews launch or land.
NASA’s picture of the day
Every day since 1995, NASA has published one image of the universe with an explanation by an astronomer. Browse any day you like.
One lap around Earth, in 92 minutes
The white dot shows where the station is in its current orbit right now. Gold is sunlight, violet is Earth’s shadow.
Sunrise
The station bursts out of Earth’s shadow. The outside temperature jumps by more than 200 °C.
A continent passes
Crossing the whole of Europe takes less time than a coffee break. The US coast to coast: about 10 minutes.
Sunset
The station slides into darkness. Cities light up below, and lightning flickers inside storm clouds.
Lap complete
Back to sunrise. Because Earth turned underneath, the new path runs about 2,500 km further west.
The station by the numbers
The largest thing humans have ever built in space, and the most expensive object ever made.
Top speeds compared, in km/h.
End to end, the station is about as long as an American football field, including the end zones.
It weighs about as much as 320 cars. It was carried up piece by piece in more than 40 launches.
Sunrises and 16 sunsets every day. Astronauts keep to UTC time so their bodies don’t lose track.
Of solar panels power the station. That is about one hectare of panels, generating up to 120 kW.
People from more than 20 countries have visited. Some stayed for nearly a year in a single trip.
Of the water on board is recycled, including sweat, breath moisture and urine. Today’s coffee is yesterday’s coffee.
How we got here
Twenty-plus years of continuous human life in orbit, in five moments.
The Russian module Zarya launches from Baikonur. Two weeks later, the US module Unity docks with it, and the station is born.
Expedition 1 arrives on 2 November. There has not been a single day without people in orbit since.
The Space Shuttle retires after finishing assembly. For nine years, Soyuz becomes the only ride up.
SpaceX Crew Dragon carries astronauts to the station, the first crewed flight by a private company.
The planned end of the mission. The station will be guided down to burn up over a remote stretch of the Pacific.
You can see it with your own eyes
The ISS is the third-brightest object in the night sky, after the Moon and Venus. It looks like a fast, steady white star, with no blinking lights. A good pass lasts up to six minutes.
Find passes on NASA’s site- 1Go out at dusk or dawnThe sky must be dark, but the station must still be in sunlight.
- 2Check the map aboveIf the visibility area is heading your way, look up in the next few minutes.
- 3Look for a steady lightPlanes blink. The ISS glides silently from west to east.
- 4WaveSomebody up there might be looking at your city through the window.
Questions people ask
How accurate is the live position?
Very. The position is calculated from the station’s official orbital data and refreshed every few seconds. It is usually accurate to within a few kilometres.
Why does the orbit path look like a wave?
The orbit is a flat circle tilted 51.6° to the equator. Projected onto a flat map of a rotating Earth, that circle turns into an S-shaped wave that shifts west with every lap.
Why doesn’t the ISS fly over the poles?
Because of that 51.6° tilt, the station never goes further north or south than about 51.6° latitude. That still covers about 90% of the world’s population.
Why is the ISS so fast if it’s floating?
It isn’t floating. It is falling around Earth all the time. It moves sideways so fast that the ground curves away beneath it before it can hit it. That is what an orbit is.
Do you collect any data about me?
No. Travel Gavel has no sign-up, no cookies, no tracking and no analytics. Your location is only used if you press the distance button, and it never leaves your device. Read the full privacy note.
Where does the data on this site come from?
Position comes from the free Where the ISS At? API. The crew list comes from an open, community-maintained dataset. Pictures come from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day API. The map uses Esri satellite imagery and OpenStreetMap.
Your privacy
Travel Gavel does not collect, store or sell any personal data. There are no accounts, no forms, no cookies, no analytics and no ads.
If you press “How far is the ISS from me?”, your browser asks for permission first. Your location is used only on your own device to calculate the distance. It is never sent to us or saved anywhere, and it disappears when you close the page.
To show live data, your browser loads information directly from public services: Where the ISS At? (station position), NASA (pictures), a public crew dataset on GitHub, Esri and OpenStreetMap (map images), Google Fonts and Cloudflare (fonts and the map library). Like any website, these services receive standard technical information such as your IP address. Their own privacy policies apply.