International Space Station News - NASA
Stay up-to-date with the latest International Space Station news releases from NASA as we continue research on the orbiting laboratory.
www.nasa.govThe International Space Station (ISS) orbits Earth in a low Earth orbit at roughly 408–420 kilometers (about 250–260 miles) altitude and travels west-to-east around the globe approximately every 90 minutes, completing about 16 orbits per day. Its exact position changes continually due to orbital dynamics and perturbations from Earth's gravity, atmospheric drag, and gravitational influences from the Moon and Sun.[3][4]
Key points about where it is now and how you can track it:
- Real-time location: The ISS’s current position can be viewed on orbital-tracking tools run by space agencies and spaceflight outlets, which plot its latitude, longitude, altitude, and velocity in near real-time.[4][3]
- Visibility from Santa Monica: Because its orbit passes over a wide latitude range, residents of southern California (including Santa Monica) occasionally have opportunities to sight the ISS with the naked eye around dawn or dusk when it is illuminated by the Sun but the ground is dark.[2]
- How the orbit changes: The ISS regularly performs attitude and orbit maneuvers to maintain its altitude and course, which can cause minor shifts in its ground track over days and weeks.[3]
Illustration: A typical ISS ground-track cycle shows the station crossing continents roughly from west to east every 90 minutes, with the ground track repeating in 93-minute orbital cycles and shifting gradually due to nodal regression and atmospheric drag.[4]
If you’d like, I can pull up a live tracker for the ISS and show you the current coordinates and the best upcoming visibility windows for Santa Monica. Also, I can provide a quick guide to spotting the ISS from your location (best times, directions, and conditions) with sources.