Vakta means the one who speaks. We built it because we were tired of having twenty tabs open just to follow a single rocket launch.
We launched Vakta in 2023 as a personal project — a single page that showed the next rocket launch and how long until liftoff. That was it. Over time we added live ISS tracking, space weather alerts, a news feed, per-rocket pages, and a blog covering the industry we were already spending hours reading about anyway. The site grew because the problem it solved was real: space is happening fast, the information is scattered, and most of it is written for engineers rather than curious people.
Vakta is run by a small independent team. We're not affiliated with SpaceX, NASA, Rocket Lab, or any space agency or investor. We don't have a newsroom budget or a PR team sending us embargoed releases. What we have is a genuine interest in what's happening above the atmosphere, a set of reliable public APIs, and enough stubbornness to keep the site running and updated.
Every orbital rocket launch from every agency and company on Earth — SpaceX, Rocket Lab, ULA, ISRO, ESA and more — with times in your local timezone and a direct link to the official stream.
Watch the International Space Station move across the globe in real time — position, altitude, speed, and whether it's in sunlight or eclipse.
Live Kp index, solar wind speed, and solar flare alerts from NOAA — so you know when to look for auroras and when satellite operators are nervous.
Which planets are visible from your location tonight, when they rise and set, and what you'll need to see them — updated nightly.
Original articles on rockets, stargazing, space investing, careers in the space industry, and space tourism — written for people who are curious, not engineers.
An AI assistant grounded in live launch and news data. Ask anything about the new space age and get a real answer, not a Wikipedia summary.
Vakta is free and independent. We're supported by display advertising (Google AdSense) and earn small affiliate commissions when readers click through to products on Amazon or eBay — at no extra cost to you. Neither advertising nor affiliate relationships influence what we cover or recommend. We've turned down sponsored content.
Questions, corrections, tips, or partnership enquiries — we read everything sent to vakta2023@gmail.com. If you spot a factual error on any page, please tell us and we'll fix it.