THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE Station (ISS), the global space project currently the home to six astronauts, will be seen flying across the Irish sky tonight.
A “star-like object” will be seen blaze across the sky around 6.06pm this evening the space enthusiast magazine and non-profit group Astronomy Ireland said.
The ISS, which will appear as an extremely bright star, will be seen slowly flying across the sky until 5 December.
“It is an incredible sight to see the International Space Station blazing across Irish skies so we are urging everyone in Ireland to go out and watch this amazing spectacle,” David Moore, Editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine said.
Moore added that the ISS is “ten to 100 times” brighter than the brightest star in the sky, meaning it can be seen easily with the naked eye.
Astronomy Ireland will use their social media pages to inform the public when it is best to see the ISS in the sky before sunset, but it should be visible every evening.
The ISS travels at 28,000km/hour and is 400 kilometres above the ground.
It orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, meaning that it goes round the Earth 16 times a day.
The project involves space agencies NASA from the United States, Roscosmos from Russia, JAXA in Japan, the ESA from Europe and Canada’s CSA.
The ISS acts as a space laboratory and carries out experiments that can only be done in weightlessness.
Astronomy Ireland said an examples of these experiments can be developing new drugs and exotic high technology materials.
The first module was launched in 1998 and the space station has been manned continuously since 2000, usually by crews of 6 astronauts who do tours of duty 6 months long.
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