The big numbers at the top are 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. Below, 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, and the dashed rings are sites with launches that have no set date yet. Drag the globe with a finger or the mouse to turn it. 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.
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.