Beautiful 3D ISS tracker with live video and near-realtime clouds
This is a little hobby project that I hope you enjoy. You can see where the International Space Station is now, with live HD video from NASA, on a realistic 3D globe. The positions of the sun and moon are also accurate, though distances aren't to scale. The clouds are also near-realtime; I span that out into a separate project at https://clouds.matteason.co.uk, where the cloud images I create from EUMETSAT data are freely available. I've got more features almost ready to go, like the ability to turn off all UI, toggleable clouds and turning off the day/night cycle I'd love for…
Beautiful 3D ISS tracker with live video and near-realtime clouds launched on April 28, 2024 with 139 votes, #380 of 4,347 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.
In plain words
This tool displays the current location of the International Space Station on a realistic 3D globe, complete with live HD video feeds from NASA. It also shows accurate positions of the sun and moon, and includes near-real-time cloud imagery derived from EUMETSAT data. The application is designed for educational use, helping students visualize space stations and Earth systems, with planned features including UI customization and toggleable elements.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
See the ISS on a beautiful 3D globe, with live video
In the maker’s words, at launch
This is a little hobby project that I hope you enjoy. You can see where the International Space Station is now, with live HD video from NASA, on a realistic 3D globe. The positions of the sun and moon are also accurate, though distances aren't to scale. The clouds are also near-realtime; I span that out into a…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Near-realtime cloud maps for weather visualisation, 3D models and more2023 · github.com · ▲68This is a service I've built to provide equirectangular cloud maps of the whole Earth, updated every 3 hours, for free. It's based on infrared and visible light data from EUMETSAT, processed to enhance the clouds and try to reduce the impact of surface temperatures on the final image. I built it because it's surprisingly hard to find these kinds of images in a format that's useful to developers and hobbyists. I was building a 3D ISS tracker and wanted to include live clouds but couldn't find anything good, so I got sidetracked, and here we are.
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I made this site using R3F (https://github.com/pmndrs/react-three-fiber), a React renderer for 3JS (https://threejs.org/). The celestial bodies are Three.JS meshes. I used loaders (namely 'useLoader' from R3F and 'GLTFLoader' from 3JS) to import 3D models, such as International Space Station. More on loading models in R3F: https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/tutorials/loading-mod... I've future plans for this side project. It would be great to hear from the HN community before diving into them. Enjoy! P.S: Getting an empty…
ISS in Real Time – 25 Years Aboard the International Space StationOct 2025 · issinrealtime.org · ▲165Today my collaborator and I are releasing issinrealtime.org, a multimedia project that plays back every day onboard the ISS. Feedback welcomed. Here's an article that was just released about it: https://www.collectspace.com/news/news-102725a-iss-in-real-t... I also wrote a "making of" post about it here: https://benfeist.com/posts/iss-in-real-time/
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