Monday 26th August to Sunday 1st September 2024
I haven't mentioned spotting the International Space Station for a while and there are a couple of good opportunities to see it next week; Monday 26th and Wednesday 28th, on both mornings from 5.01am. The ISS will appear in the west and spend about five minutes silently travelling eastwards like a star that is moving slowly. On the Wednesday, the space station will pass directly over your head.
Although it appears to be moving slowly to you, in reality the thing is travelling at a massive 17,000 miles per hour! The ISS is classed as being in a "low Earth orbit" only 260 miles above us, so it has to travel that fast to overcome the forces of gravity that would like it to return to the Earth. At that speed, it only takes 90 minutes to orbit around the planet, meanwhile we have rotated a bit, so every time the ISS goes around the Earth, it appears to be in a different place.
For you to be able to see it, not only does the space station have to be passing over our part of the Earth, but its angle to the Sun has to be correct to illuminate the solar panels, else you won't see a thing! That explains why you can only observe the ISS at dawn or dusk on certain days.
The International Space Station is the largest man-made object orbiting the Earth and is truly international, with crew members from all over the World. After the Space Race to the Moon ended in the early 1970s, the USA and USSR carried out their initial collaboration with the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project that saw the first docking of spacecraft from two different nations. Skylab and Mir followed and the plans for the current ISS were announced in 1993 - it started with just two modules in 2000 and has since grown to a total of 18, with the most recent being added in 2021.
ISS in 2000
ISS in 2023
www.starsoversomerset.com
Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium
Copyright Adrian Dening and Radio Ninesprings 2024
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