Science
DAMPE / Wukong
Catalogued as DAMPE
Dark Matter / Cosmic Ray Detector · Chinese Academy of Sciences
Right now
LiveIt moves every second. See exactly where it is — worked out from its orbit, on your own device — on the live 3D globe.
- Over
- —
- Altitude
- —
- Speed
- —
Named after the Monkey King of Chinese legend who can see demons in disguise, DAMPE hunts for dark matter — the invisible substance making up 27% of the universe that has never been directly detected. In its first 530 days, it recorded 1.5 million high-energy cosmic ray electrons and positrons with the highest energy resolution of any space instrument. In 2026 it published a landmark result in Nature: direct evidence for a 'cosmic speed limit' on particle acceleration near Earth, rewriting cosmic ray physics after a century of uncertainty.
Its orbit
- Orbit
- Low Earth Orbitcan appear as a fast-moving star at dawn or dusk
- Altitude
- 291–302 mi (468–486 km)
- Inclination
- 97.5°
- One orbit
- 94.0 minutes15.3 orbits a day
- NORAD ID
- 41173
- Int’l designator
- 2015-078A
- Launched
- 2015
Orbital elements from CelesTrak, as of 22 Sep 2026.