How to use it
The highlighted box at the top is the answer: the soonest launch with a set time, when it is in your time zone, where it lifts off, and a countdown to the second. One sentence also tells you how long after that the next launch follows. Below it, the relay links the next ten launches in order and draws the gap between each pair as a line: the longer the line, the longer the wait. Gaps shorter than a day carry one tick per hour.
Select a row to open the launch window, weather odds, target orbit, provider, mission summary and official webcasts; the globe turns to that site. Its numbers match the relay. Use the country buttons to see only US or Chinese launches (gaps are recalculated within your selection) and hide Starlink if the near-daily Starlink flights crowd the list.
NET and launch windows
NET means no earlier than. A launch never moves earlier than its NET, but it often moves later. The launch window is the period on that day in which the rocket must lift off to reach its orbit. Missions that must meet a target precisely, like cargo flights to a space station, often have an instantaneous window: a delay of seconds moves them to another day.
Launch times also come with a precision. Times set to the minute or second get a live countdown; times known only to the hour read “about 18 h”; date-only launches read “in about 20 days”; and month, quarter or year plans read “sometime in October” or “Q4 2026” with no countdown at all. Counting seconds toward a placeholder would only look precise.
Why launch times change
Launches slip often: upper-level winds, lightning risk, clouds, a boat in the range or recovery zone, or one odd sensor reading can stop a countdown. Calling off the attempt for the day is a scrub. When a satellite must reach a particular orbit, the next usable time may be a day or more away.
When a scheduled time moves by more than 5 minutes, this tool shows Rescheduled with the old and new time for 48 hours. When the time has passed with no result yet, it never claims the rocket launched; it says “Checking if it launched” until the result arrives in “Results from the last 24 hours”.
Reading the times
The English page uses your device's time zone. You can switch to UTC, Korea time, or the launch site's local time, and every clock time shows its zone (PDT, UTC, KST). A rocket lifting off at 8 PM in California is noon the next day in Seoul; the globe shows why at a glance. Date-only launches such as “Oct 29 (time TBD)” are never shifted between zones: the source stores them as midnight UTC, and converting them would show the wrong day west of Greenwich.
Where the data comes from
Launch data comes from Launch Library 2 (opens in a new tab) by The Space Devs, a community-maintained database of launches worldwide. We read it every 3 hours, add place names, time zones and gaps, and publish the result with this site. Your browser never contacts The Space Devs directly, which is also what they ask API users to do.
“Launch data updated: N min ago” at the top shows when the data was last read. After 8 hours without an update you get a warning; after 24 hours the live countdowns stop and only the last known times remain. If your device clock is off by more than 30 seconds, countdowns follow the server clock. The data can't be guaranteed 100 % accurate, so check the launch provider for anything that matters.
No rocket photos are shown: their licences vary (many are non-commercial or unknown). The line drawings and the globe are our own.