The space station is shown above partly cloudy skies over the Caspian Sea. The long, dark rectangles are solar arrays which capture the sun’s energy to help power the station. It measures 240’ across the solar panels, 146’ long and 90’ tall. It contains 15,000 square feet of living space and weighs over 471,000 pounds. (NASA Photo).THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION—
One recent evening I watched the space station glow gently across the northern sky. It looks like a bright star passing at about the speed of an airliner.
I still get a tingly feeling on such occasions while remembering space-faring pilots and scientists are aboard and, no doubt, looking westward at the rapidly setting sun—their 16th sunset of the day.
You see, they are traveling about 17,000 miles per hour approximately 250 miles above the Earth and orbit our planet every 90 minutes. Consequently, sunrises and sunsets are a fairly common occurrence for them.
On this evening the station was visible about 10 degrees above my northern horizon and traveling easterly. The path of each orbit varies. This time it was actually flying over the ground directly above the province of Ontario Canada.
This particular ground track passed over the southern tip of Hudson Bay while I watched.
Information about visible orbits is available here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
When you get to this page click on the top right panel which says: “See the ISS in the Night Sky”.
You will not be disappointed.
One recent evening I watched the space station glow gently across the northern sky. It looks like a bright star passing at about the speed of an airliner.
I still get a tingly feeling on such occasions while remembering space-faring pilots and scientists are aboard and, no doubt, looking westward at the rapidly setting sun—their 16th sunset of the day.
You see, they are traveling about 17,000 miles per hour approximately 250 miles above the Earth and orbit our planet every 90 minutes. Consequently, sunrises and sunsets are a fairly common occurrence for them.
On this evening the station was visible about 10 degrees above my northern horizon and traveling easterly. The path of each orbit varies. This time it was actually flying over the ground directly above the province of Ontario Canada.
This particular ground track passed over the southern tip of Hudson Bay while I watched.
Information about visible orbits is available here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
When you get to this page click on the top right panel which says: “See the ISS in the Night Sky”.
You will not be disappointed.
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