Reading the live map
Two things move on the map: the dot is the station right now, and the lineis the path it is flying — behind it, where it has just been, and ahead, where it is heading next.
The sub-satellite point — the spot on Earth the ISS is directly above at this instant. It slides west-to-east and shifts a little every second.
One loop around the planet drawn onto a flat map becomes an S-shaped wave. Each pass lands further west as the Earth turns underneath.
The orbit is tilted 51.6° to the equator, so the track never climbs past about 51.6° north or south — the ISS simply never flies over the far polar regions.
Curious why the path waves like that, or how busy that altitude has become? These explainers unpack it:
“Where is it now” and “when can I see it” — two questions
The god’s-eye map — where the ISS is orbiting right now, anywhere on Earth, and the path it is tracing.
The ISS is one of the brightest things in the night sky. See the next visible passes over your city— the time, and which way to look.
SKY · SATELLITESSatellites & Starlink →The station is not alone up there. Track other satellites and catch a fresh Starlink train crossing your sky.
See it in context
Add flights, storms or the live cloud field beneath the station and watch it cross the planet in real time.
SKY · TONIGHTWhat’s up tonight? →Everything bright crossing your sky tonight — the ISS, a Starlink train, planets — ranked easiest to spot first.
SUN · OUR STARThe Sun that lights it →You only see the ISS when it is still catching sunlight in a dark sky — the same Sun, live across wavelengths.
About this data
The station’s orbit is described by a two-line element set (a TLE) published by CelesTrak, derived from US Space Force tracking — public-domain orbital data, no key. We fetch it through our own cached, keyless proxy and then compute the live position and ground track in your browser with the standard SGP4 orbit model (the satellite.jslibrary). The path is split at the ±180° line so it never streaks across the map, and if the elements ever fail to load the overlay simply stays empty — we never draw a made-up position. Because it is a live propagation, the dot is accurate to well within a city’s width; the exact pass times for your location are computed on the Sky ISS pages.