Community Corner

Look Up to Find the Space Station This Week

Free email or text alerts from NASA can tell you when the International Space Station will pass over the Marlboro area.

Written by Anthony Bellano
Anthony.Bellano@Patch.com

The International Space Station will be visible over East Brunswick at 9:37 tonight, and at certain times every until Thursday.

A new free NASA service can alert anybody when the international space station passes over their house.

"As the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon, the space station is easy to see if you know where and when to look for it," NASA writes on its "Spot The Station" web page.

Here's the detail on the next opportunity to see it over the Marlboro area:
  • Time: 9:37 p.m. Monday, August 5
  • Visible: for 4 minutes
  • Max Height: 77 degrees (with 0 degrees as the horizon and 90 degrees straight overhead)
  • Appears: to the west-southwest
  • Disappears: to the northeast
Sign up for email alerts at spotthestation.nasa.gov

Here's the detail from the NASA page:

Find out what's happening in Marlboro-Coltsneckwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

NASA’s Spot the Station service sends you an email or text message a few hours before the space station passes over your house. The space station looks like a fast-moving plane in the sky, though one with people living and working aboard it more than 200 miles above the ground. It is best viewed on clear nights. For more information on the International Space Station and its mission, visit the space station mission pages.

Spot the Station is available worldwide to anyone with an email account or SMS-enabled phone. Several times a week, Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, determines sighting opportunities for 4,600 locations worldwide. If your specific city or town isn’t listed, pick one that is fairly close to you. The space station is visible for a long distance around each of the listed locations.

Find out what's happening in Marlboro-Coltsneckwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This service will only notify you of “good” sighting opportunities - that is, sightings that are high enough in the sky (40 degrees or more) and last long enough to give you the best view of the orbiting laboratory. This will be anywhere from once or twice a week to once or twice a month, depending on the space station’s orbit. Don’t worry if there are big gaps in between sightings! A complete list of all possible space station sightings is available from Johnson Space Center.


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