We call the second it vanishes.
SpacePings pings you before a satellite crosses your sky — and calls the exact moment it slips into Earth's shadow and disappears. The Fade. You just have to look up.
Free on iOS · No account needed to see tonight's sky
TestFlight opening soon
The Fade
Not a cliff. A window.
Every satellite you can see is sunlight glinting off metal, hundreds of kilometers up. Partway through a pass, it flies out of daylight and into Earth's own shadow — mid-sky, no warning, gone. That's the Fade.
It isn't instant. A fade is a ~22-second dimming window, not a cliff — we call the window, and the second we call is the moment it starts, not a single instant we can't actually promise.
Most trackers give you a rise time and a set time for a pass and stop there. We built the whole notification around the one second in between that people actually remember watching.
How it works
Three steps, no guesswork
- 01
Tell us where you are
One location permission. That's the entire signup — no account required just to see tonight's sky.
- 02
We do the math
Orbits, shadow geometry, cloud cover — computed server-side against real orbital data. Your phone runs zero orbital math; it just waits for the ping.
- 03
Look up at the called second
We ping you before the pass starts, then the app counts you down to the exact second the Fade begins. You just have to be looking.
Pings
What you get pinged for
Fades & ignitions
The satellite you're watching disappears mid-sky — or, in reverse, ignites out of nowhere as it flies into sunlight. The moment people actually remember. This is what SpacePings is built around.
Bright passes
A pass bright enough to actually notice, timed to the second it clears your horizon — not a table of everything currently overhead.
Launches worth watching
New rockets reaching orbit, pulled from the public launch schedule -- a countdown and a live stream, so a quiet stretch of sky still has something worth watching.
Cloudy? We stay quiet. A ping means it's worth going outside.
In the app
Built for the ninety seconds that matter
The Fade, counted to the second
Live Pass Mode ticks down to the exact second a satellite fades or ignites -- bisected server-side to within half a second, not a coarser sample. VoiceOver hears the identical countdown spoken as words: "THE FADE BEGINS IN: 5 minutes 23 seconds".
Turn-by-turn compass guidance
A gold arrow points at the pass on screen. VoiceOver hears the same instruction in words -- "It's to the northeast. Turn right 20 degrees." -- and degrades to an honest hint, never a frozen arrow, if there's no compass fix.
Elevation tilt guidance
A quarter-circle arc shows how far up to look, with a second marker for where your phone is actually pointed -- spoken aloud for VoiceOver too: "47 degrees above the horizon. Tilt up 28 degrees."
Two haptic cues, exactly timed
One light tap 60 seconds before a pass starts. The signature buzz 10 seconds before the Fade or ignition. Nothing else -- the vocabulary stays small enough to mean something every time it fires.
Night Vision mode
One tap washes the whole screen copper -- the wavelength that preserves eyes already adapted to the dark -- so checking your phone mid-pass doesn't cost you your night vision. Manual only; nothing dims itself behind your back.
Sky Now
One sheet: what's overhead right now, what's coming up next, and any launch worth watching -- built entirely from data already on your phone, live for as long as the sheet stays open, at zero extra network cost.
Saw it / Missed it, from the lock screen
Log a sighting straight off the notification. iOS handles the tap in the background -- your screen never gets yanked to the foreground while you're standing outside in the dark.
Offline stays honest
Can't reach the server? SpacePings says so, plainly -- and any cached passes still on screen are labeled with exactly how old they are. Never a fake "all quiet."
Built to leave you alone
Your location is never linked to your identity. No tracking, no third-party SDKs -- the same privacy manifest Apple reviews before the app ever reaches your phone.
Pricing
Free tonight. Pro for depth.
Free
$0
- Push alerts
- The full quality gate
- Tonight's sky
- 1 location
Pro
$4.99/moor $29.99/yr
- Multi-location
- Custom lead times
- Plan-ahead views
Adopt a Satellite
Coming soonName any object in the catalog for $4.99 one-time. Non-exclusive — the first person to adopt an object keeps a permanent first-adopter badge.
Managed through your App Store account.