Track the ISS Position With curl

Fetch the live latitude, longitude and altitude of the space station.

LinuxcurlnetworkapiLow risk

Run curl -s https://api.wheretheiss.at/v1/satellites/25544 to print the ISS position as JSON.

01Command

Command

$ curl -s https://api.wheretheiss.at/v1/satellites/25544

02What it does

The Where the ISS at? API returns the station's current latitude, longitude, altitude and velocity. Extract fields with jq, for example jq '{lat, lon}' or jq '.altitude', and call it in a watch loop to follow the orbit.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

Requirementscurl (preinstalled on most Linux distributions)

!Warning: The ISS orbits every ~90 minutes, so readings go stale fast; do not treat a single call as a lasting position.

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

Where the ISS at? API
wheretheiss.at · vendor-doc · 2026-09-20
Evidence: Documents the satellites/25544 endpoint returning ISS position and telemetry.

Last verified: 2026-09-20 · Category: Network

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