

You can also visit to find out who is on the station right now! And don’t worry, you won’t be getting 16 messages per day! Spot the Station will only notify you of good sightings, where the space station is high enough in the sky that you will be able to see it well and for a decent length of time - usually occurring anything from a week to a month apart. You can simply click here and select Brisbane, then enter your details to sign up for alerts. It is available for free, worldwide, giving details for over 6,700 locations around the world. Spot the Station is a NASA service that lets you know via SMS or email when a good sighting of the station will occur near you. Image courtesy of When Will the International Space Station Pass Over Us? When you see it, you can’t help but be in awe of the fact that there are people literally on the space station right at that moment, living in microgravity, conducting scientific research and looking down on our blue planet from space! It can launch discussions into these topics that are usually so far removed from our everyday lives, and can ignite their interest in learning more about this fascinating field.įor little kids who are too young to understand the concept of space stations, what could be better than being outside after dark, looking up at the beautiful night sky and making a wish on a shooting star? That’s pretty magical! Older kids and adults alike love spotting the station because of how it connects them with the reality of astronauts and space travel. Since it completes almost 16 orbits of the earth per day, good spotting opportunities occur very frequently and can last several minutes.

It looks like a slightly larger and very bright star moving slowly across the sky. The International Space Station is one of the brightest objects in the sky and can be easily seen by the naked eye. Image courtesy of Spotting the International Space Station Read on for some fun facts about the International Space Station below! It is also a test station for spacecraft equipment and systems. It is essentially a research laboratory for experiments in space conditions and microgravity in many different fields, from biology and physics to astronomy and meteorology. It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from many different countries, and is typically inhabited by a crew of up to six members. Construction of the space station began in 1998, and it is continually being maintained, repaired and expanded. The International Space Station is a habitable artificial satellite that orbits the Earth. And one thing that makes the idea of man in space even more real to kids is getting to see the International Space Station crossing the night sky! About the International Space Station It probably has something to do with the fact that it seems like something mystical and fictional and yet it’s actually real. And the next time you have to pee or poop, be thankful that you’re doing it with gravity’s help.Kids love everything to do with space, from stars and planets to astronauts, rockets and space travel. If you’ve ever seen a shooting star, it might have been a meteorite burning up in Earth’s atmosphere - or it might have been flaming astronaut poo. The containers are then loaded into a cargo ship that brought supplies to the space station, and this ship is launched at Earth and burns up in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Astronauts also put toilet paper, wipes and gloves - gloves help keep everything clean - in the containers, too. Poop is vacuumed into garbage bags that are put into airtight containers. Sometimes, astronaut poop is brought back to Earth for scientists to study, but most of the time, bathroom waste - including poop - is burned. Astronauts say that “Today’s coffee is tomorrow’s coffee!” All astronaut pee is collected and turned back into clean, drinkable water. Since water is heavy and takes up a lot of space, it is better to recycle pee rather than bring up clean water from Earth.
