How To See The International Space Station From Michigan Tonight
We're between meteor showers, but skywatchers can still see something special if they gaze into the heavens at night. The International Space Station is visible nightly and appears as a bright star moving quickly across the horizon. But it's fleeting, so how can you know when it's directly over Michigan?
NASA has a great tool, Spot the Station, that will send text or email alerts when ISS is visible from Michigan. The alert includes a map-based feature to track when and where to look for the station as it flies overhead.
The alerts typically go out a few times a month letting subscribers know when to look overhead. The window of opportunity is small — in some places, you'll see it only for a couple of minutes, and it may be visible anywhere from once a month to several times a week.
If you don't know, the International Space Station has been orbiting the Earth since 1998, when its first module was launched, and since 2000 has hosted a rotating international crew from the 16 nations that cooperated in the construction of a permanent human outpost in space. Astronauts are shuttled to the microgravity laboratory by U.S. and Russian spacecraft, and typically spend about six-month stints living and working in space.
Speaking of getting the crew to the space lab, there was some drama Thursday when a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a new U.S.-Russian crew to the space station failed during its ascent, sending the crew capsule back toward Earth in a ballistic re-entry, NASA officials said. NASA astronaut Nick Hague, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and crew members are all in good condition. They were to have joined a three-person crew already on board the space station.
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