ISS Webcam – Earth From the International Space Station
About this webcam
The ISS Webcam carries live video from NASA’s external high-definition cameras on the International Space Station, relayed by afarTV with a data dashboard beneath it. The main picture looks down past a white, insulated section of station hardware at whatever lies below: deep blue ocean dotted with cumulus, long streaks of cloud over the Black Sea, the open water off South Australia. The station circles Earth about every 90 minutes, so the light changes quickly, and roughly half of every orbit passes in darkness. NASA’s downlink also drops out regularly, and then the main window switches to a computer simulation of the ground under the station until the signal returns on its own.
About the International Space Station
The International Space Station is a laboratory in low Earth orbit, built and run by space agencies from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. NASA puts its length at 109 meters (356 feet) end to end, one yard short of a full American football field, and its mass at 419,725 kilograms (925,335 pounds). Eight solar arrays supply 75 to 90 kilowatts of power, and their wingspan, also 109 meters (356 feet), is wider than the 80 meters (262 feet) of an Airbus A380.
People have lived aboard without a break since November 2000, and the usual crew is seven. The partners plan to retire the station in 2030: the United States, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency countries committed through that year, and Russia through 2028. SpaceX holds an $843 million NASA contract to build the US Deorbit Vehicle, which will push the station into the atmosphere so that any pieces surviving reentry fall into a remote stretch of the South Pacific known as Point Nemo.
What the ISS Webcam Shows by Day and Night
A slab of station hardware, wrapped in white insulation with “FLAP 2” stenciled along one edge, often fills one side of the frame while Earth slides past the other. In daylight the ocean reads as deep blue and cloud fields as bright white patches. A smaller box at the bottom right carries a second camera while the feed is live and the station is in sunlight; in recent frames it showed the bright curve of the horizon with one of the station’s robotic arms reaching across it.
Night comes around 16 times a day, because NASA counts 16 orbits every 24 hours, and each orbit brings a sunrise and a sunset about 45 minutes apart, which the dashboard counts down. On the dark side the stream runs with a night filter that brightens the picture and leaves a speckle of colored noise across the black, and the operator says lightning storms and the lights of towns and cities show up there. The world map at the bottom left plots lightning strikes as they happen, so you can tell when the station is about to pass over an active storm.
How the ISS Live Feed and Dashboard Work
afarTV takes NASA’s external camera stream and wraps it in a dashboard of four boxes. Far left is a world map with the station’s track for the last 90 minutes in yellow and the next 90 minutes in white. Beside it, a zoomed map shows the station’s position over the current cloud cover. The center box names the state, country or body of water below, with the time in UTC, the station’s speed, elevation and coordinates, and a status tag that reads Live Now or Offline. Facts about the country underneath rotate below it, drawn from Our World in Data.
In mid-October 2026 the dashboard put the station between about 424 and 433 kilometers (263 and 269 miles) above the surface, moving at about 7.65 kilometers per second (4.75 miles per second), or roughly 27,500 km/h (17,100 mph). The operator notes that the maps and the camera can run up to 15 seconds out of step. While the downlink is lost, the bottom right box shows time-lapse images of the Sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Seeing the Space Station From the Ground
No telescope is needed. NASA’s Spot the Station service describes the station as looking like an airplane or a very bright star moving across the sky, with no flashing lights and no change of direction. Every sighting falls within a few hours before or after sunrise or sunset, when sunlight still reflects off the station while the sky around it has turned dark.
NASA’s Spot the Station app, on the App Store and Google Play, sends notifications for upcoming sightings. The white line on the webcam’s world map helps with the timing, since it shows where the station is heading over the next 90 minutes.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What can you see on the ISS Webcam?
Earth from more than 420 kilometers (260 miles) up, seen past a white, insulated section of the station’s structure: ocean, cloud and land by day, lightning and city lights at night. A dashboard under the picture shows where the station is, how high it is and how fast it is moving.
Is the ISS live feed really live?
Yes, whenever the center box of the dashboard says Live Now. When it says Offline, the main window shows a simulation of the ground under the station, or archived video, rather than NASA’s live camera.
Why is the ISS live feed black or showing a simulation?
Black usually means the station is on the night side of Earth, which takes up roughly half of every 90-minute orbit. A computer-drawn view under an Offline tag means NASA’s signal has dropped. That happens regularly, and the live picture comes back by itself once the connection is restored.
Can you see inside the ISS on the live feed?
Not in the main picture, which comes from an external camera aimed at Earth. The operator says the small box at the bottom right sometimes shows the crew working inside, while the feed is live and the station is in daylight; at other times it carries a wide view of Earth with parts of the station in front.
Does the ISS live feed show UFOs?
Odd lights on the feed have ordinary causes that you can usually see on screen. At night the filter that brightens the picture also adds colored speckle, sunlight flares off the station’s own hardware by day, and lightning and city lights appear as flashes and glowing patches far below.
Where is the ISS right now?
The center box of the dashboard names the country, state or ocean below the station, and the zoomed map beside it marks the spot. At about 7.65 kilometers per second (4.75 miles per second), the station crosses from one country or sea to the next within minutes.
How can I see the ISS in the sky?
Look for a steady, bright point moving across the sky within a few hours of sunrise or sunset, with no blinking lights. NASA’s Spot the Station app sends alerts for upcoming sightings.