Every satellite, where it is this second

What you are looking at

Each dot is one satellite, drawn over the point on the ground directly beneath it and coloured by what it is. Most are in low orbit and cross the map in minutes: watch the ISS and it goes round the world in an hour and a half. The orange ring along the equator does not move at all — those are the geostationary satellites, 35,786 km up, turning exactly as fast as the Earth. Tap any satellite for its height and speed, and the dashed line shows where it will pass during its next revolution.

How to read it

• White marks with a name are the crewed stations: the ISS and China's Tiangong.
• Blue is Starlink — more than half of everything working in orbit; green is navigation (GPS, Galileo, BeiDou), orange the geostationary ring.
• Tap a satellite for its height, speed, how long one revolution takes — and its path over the ground for the next one.

Questions

Where is the ISS right now?

The figures at the top of this page say which country or ocean the International Space Station is over at this moment, and on the map it is the white mark labelled ISS. It circles the Earth every 92 minutes at about 27,600 km/h, some 420 km up.

How many satellites are in orbit?

About sixteen thousand working ones, and the number grows every week. More than ten thousand of them are Starlink satellites; a decade ago the total for every country and company together was under two thousand.

Why do some satellites not move?

A satellite 35,786 km above the equator takes exactly one day to go round — the same as the Earth takes to turn — so from the ground it hangs in one place. That is why a satellite dish can be bolted to a wall, and why weather and television satellites sit in that ring.