Tiangong — China's space station — orbits Earth every 92 minutes at 390km altitude, visible to the naked eye as a bright red-tinged star crossing the sky. It's one of the brightest objects in the night sky and passes over most of the world's population.
OrbitalNodes.ai tracks Tiangong in real time using live TLE data and SGP4 orbital propagation — the same method used by professional space agencies. We show its current position on a live 3D globe and predict exactly when it will next pass over your location.
🛰 TRACK TIANGONG LIVEUse OrbitalNodes to get exact pass times for your location — Tiangong passes over most of the world's population and is visible from everywhere between 51.6°N and 51.6°S latitude. It looks like a very bright reddish-orange star moving steadily across the sky during twilight. No telescope or binoculars needed. Passes happen several times per week and last 3-6 minutes.
Tiangong reaches magnitude −3 at peak — slightly dimmer than the ISS (which peaks at −5.9) but still easily one of the brightest objects in the night sky. At its best it outshines Jupiter and rivals Venus. The main difference in appearance is a subtle reddish-orange tint compared to the ISS's bluer-white colour, which comes from the different surface materials and solar panel coatings.
Tiangong (meaning "Heavenly Palace") is China's permanent space station, completed in 2022 after a decade of development. It consists of three modules: Tianhe (core living and control module), Wentian (science lab, launched July 2022), and Mengtian (science lab, launched October 2022). The station hosts a permanent crew of three taikonauts rotating every six months, and is planned to operate until at least 2035.
Yes — Tiangong's 51.6° orbital inclination (identical to the ISS) means it passes over everywhere between 51.6°N and 51.6°S latitude. That includes the entire US, UK, Europe, Australia, China, Japan, India, and most of the world. Only locations above 51.6°N (northern Canada, Scandinavia, Alaska) miss out. OrbitalNodes calculates pass times for your exact coordinates.
Tiangong is smaller — about 60 tonnes and 100m span with solar arrays compared to the ISS at 420 tonnes and 109m. Tiangong hosts 3 crew versus up to 7 on the ISS. It orbits about 30km lower (390km vs 420km). Tiangong has a T-shaped configuration — one core module with two lab modules at right angles — versus the ISS's long linear truss. Both orbit at the same 51.6° inclination so pass times are similar from any given location.
The reddish tint comes from Tiangong's solar panel design and surface coatings which reflect sunlight differently to the ISS. It's subtle — both stations appear as bright white-yellow lights to most observers — but under good conditions with binoculars the colour difference is noticeable. The orange tint is also more apparent when Tiangong is lower on the horizon where atmospheric scattering adds to the warm colour.
China has no plans to join the ISS and Tiangong is a fully independent station. The ISS is planned for deorbit around 2030, after which Tiangong and planned US commercial stations would be the only crewed stations in orbit. China has invited international scientists to conduct experiments on Tiangong and several ESA astronauts have trained for potential missions, though none have flown yet.
At 27,600 km/h Tiangong covers the sky in about the same time as the ISS — typically 4-6 minutes from horizon to horizon for a high-elevation pass. You can see it move against the stars in real time, faster than any aircraft. At peak brightness on a near-overhead pass it moves roughly one fist-width per 10-15 seconds.
OrbitalNodes tracks both Tiangong and the ISS simultaneously — see both space stations on the live globe and get pass predictions for both from your location. The Best Pass This Week feature compares both and highlights whichever gives the most spectacular viewing opportunity.