Iridium is the only satellite network that covers every point on Earth, poles included — 66 cross-linked satellites in six polar planes at 780 km, operated by Iridium Communications. OrbitalNodes tracks every Iridium NEXT satellite in real time.
OrbitalNodes' counter shows how many Iridium satellites are above your horizon right now. Because Iridium flies in polar planes, you get good passes from any latitude — including high-Arctic and Antarctic locations where most constellations thin out.
Iridium was the original satellite-phone megaconstellation — 66 cross-linked satellites conceived by Motorola in the 1990s to put a phone signal anywhere on Earth. It cost around $5 billion to build, launched in 1997–98, and was so far ahead of the market that it filed for bankruptcy in 1999. A group of investors bought the entire constellation for about $25 million and found durable, profitable niches: maritime, aviation, defence, and remote operations where no ground network or geostationary satellite can reach.
The original satellites were famous for something else entirely. Their flat, mirror-like main antennas caught sunlight and produced “Iridium flares” — brief, predictable flashes that could briefly outshine Venus. Skywatchers planned evenings around them. The second-generation Iridium NEXT satellites, built by Thales Alenia Space and launched by SpaceX across eight Falcon 9 flights between 2017 and 2019, have a different antenna design and do not flare. The famous flares are now a thing of the past — a small piece of space history that ended when the old constellation was retired.
What makes Iridium genuinely unique is its geometry: 66 satellites in six near-polar planes that physically cross-link to their neighbours, routing calls through space without needing a ground station underneath. That gives true pole-to-pole coverage — the reason Iridium underpins the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System and connects research stations in Antarctica.
If you remember planning evenings around Iridium flares, those came from the original constellation, retired in 2019. The current NEXT satellites don't flare — so a predicted “Iridium flare” from an old app is no longer real. What you can still catch is a steady, faint pass during twilight.
No — and this is the most common misconception. The bright, predictable Iridium flares came from the flat, mirror-like antennas on the original satellites, which were retired and deorbited between 2017 and 2019. The current Iridium NEXT satellites have a different design and do not flare, so old flare-prediction apps and Heavens-Above no longer list them. You can still track Iridium NEXT — they appear as steady, fairly faint moving points (around magnitude 6), not flashes.
The constellation was originally designed to have 77 satellites — and iridium is element 77 on the periodic table, so the name fit. The design was later scaled back to 66 active satellites (six orbital planes of 11), but the name stuck. Element 66 is dysprosium, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
The first-generation fleet was launched in 1997–98 by Motorola, cost about $5 billion, and the company went bankrupt in 1999 before being bought for roughly $25 million and revived. Between 2017 and 2019 those satellites were replaced one slot at a time by Iridium NEXT and then deliberately deorbited, with the last originals burning up by the end of 2019. A few may linger as tumbling debris.
Yes — Iridium is very much operating. It runs 66 active satellites in six polar planes of 11, plus several in-orbit spares at slightly lower altitude ready to slot in. OrbitalNodes’ live counter shows how many are above your horizon right now; the tracker reflects the current catalogued total.
Satellite phones, maritime and aviation safety, military and government communications, and machine-to-machine / IoT — over a million IoT devices run on Iridium. It’s part of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS). Because its 66 cross-linked satellites give complete global coverage including both poles, Iridium reaches places — open ocean, Antarctica — that most networks can’t.