![]() ![]() Video: International Space Station, ISS, as seen from Earth Keep in mind that it has to be dark (night) where you are, and the International Space Station has to happen to be going overhead. It can range from one sighting opportunity a month to several a week. It depends on where you are located in the world. How often does one expect to see the space station? You can set the alert on the Spot the Station website. You can just drop your email or phone number, and NASA will alert you before the International Space Station is going overhead. NASA even created an alert for you to spot the ISS. ![]() It will also be moving considerably faster than a typical airplane (airplanes generally fly at about 600 mph or 965 km/h). The ISS looks like an airplane or a very bright star moving across the sky, except it doesn’t have flashing lights or change direction. It can only be seen when it is dawn or dusk at your location. However, unlike the Moon, the space station isn’t bright enough to see during the day. The space station is visible because it reflects the light of the Sun – the same reason we can see the Moon or any other planet in the solar system. Visible to the naked eye, it looks like a fast-moving plane only much higher and traveling thousands of miles an hour faster! It moves at 7.66 kilometers per second, or roughly 27,580 km/h or 17,137 mph! It is the third brightest object in the sky (dimmer only than the Sun and Moon) and easy to spot if you know when to look up. You can watch the International Space Station pass overhead from several thousand locations worldwide. How to spot the International Space Station in the sky? Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Why Spacecraft Orbits look wave-like on maps || Short Animation () A short animation showcasing how a circular orbit is projected as a wave on a flat (two-dimensional) map. ![]()
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