International Space Station is orbiting us now

At 22.46 tonight I happened to look out when I saw a bright light flying direct overhead. Upon checking this fantastic new website, calsky.com, I was able to verify that indeed at 22.45 the ISS did fly above my house. It contains even a star chart to enable you to check its path. First time I have seen it.

There is also another website called heavens-above.com which does a similar task but this one shows much more info.

Thanks for the heads-up, Jeremy.
I'm also just wondering what it was doing up there before it started orbiting us.

Probably a waste drop.

I have seen a couple satellites. One of them was orbiting me, the other one was orbiting jeremy. I could tell by the trajectory. Then I got pissed off because the one orbiting him was bigger, and somehow the energy shot mine right out of orbit and now it's headed for uranus.

If you look at the sun through binoculars for long enough you can sometimes see the shadow of the ISS as it passes in front.

Here's a photo of the ISS and Space Shuttle doing just that. See also the full size version.

Saw it again tonight. Niice.

I saw the ISS a couple of years ago while visiting the Volkssternwarte in Munich. Our guide pointed it out to us, and if I remember rightly, he said it is a fairly common sight in the sky, if you know where/when to look, and if you realise what it is that you're seeing. It was a bright point of light drifting across the still-bright evening sky close to the western horizon. If I hadn't known it was the ISS, I'd probably have assumed it was a plane.

Just reading this again, and I think it's worth noting that, if you are crazy enough to look at the sun - even for a moment - through binoculars as up-side-down suggests, you'd better make sure you enjoy the sight, because you might not be able to see much else afterwards for the rest of your life. I know TTers are a fairly savvy lot, but still, if one of them is daft enough to post advice like that, someone else might just be daft enough to try it.

Anything you've seen in the last few days was actually the ISS and Space Shuttle Atlantis. The Shuttle just delivered another solar array to the ISS thus it's a lot brighter than it used to be (plus the added reflectivity of having the Shuttle attached during the current mission). By the time the next solar array is delivered it will be the brightest object in the night sky after the moon.

As long as it doesn't come crashing back down to earth due to a computer malfunction

Well, yesterday (or the day before) all the on-board computers which regulate the oxygen and water supplies stop working. Last night cnn reported that the russian technicians had managed to regain partial communication with the computers and that they were working partially. If by the time the Atlantis has to come back they haven't manage to have them working on normal status it may be that the station's three-men crew will come back to earth for security. Link to CNN report.

Oxygen and water supply was the least of the worry with the failure of the Russian TsBM and TBM computers. Without them, Russian thrusters couldn't be used meaning the Shuttle couldn't undock without leaving the ISS to tumble. American gyroscopes can be used for long duration at a static attitude but thrusters are required to do any type of maneuver. Fortunately, 4 out of the 6 computers were restarted nominally after the other two were bypassed (there are 3 redundant TsBMs and 3 redundant TBMs - at least one of each is required). The failed computers are known to be finicky about their power supply. Whether the upstream power or the computer's power supply are to blame remains to be seen.

I used to prefer the design of the Russian segment Command & Data Handling system (CDH) to the American design but now I'm having second thoughts. Rather than the Russian system which uses two sets of two-fault tolerant computers, the US uses a network of dozens of computers, all one or two-fault tolerant, which have identical hardware but dedicated software. In the event of a hardware failure, a less important computer's components can be scavenged to build or repair a more important one. One advantage to the Russian system is that each type of computer runs its calculations in parallel with the other two; they then compare data, reject anything that doesn't fit. If one computer is voted out by the other two it goes into a diagnostic state. There are pros and cons to both philosophies I suppose.

Tidbit of info: the Russian computers were designed in Germany. They are NOT the same as the ones that the Russians used in the past.

The shuttle took a sweet pics of a TIE fighter yesterday:

Looks like a short range fighter.

DW in a museum in Ulan Battar, Mongolia I saw an old Russian space suit. Rickety old thing it was.

I used to drive the Arabian desert in the finest technology roubles could buy - a Lada Niva. Now that was chunky technology. I also crossed the Gobi desert in a Russian bus - solid and easy to repair. We sprang a puncture in the steppe and these lads repaired it entirely manually in an hour.

My impression of their stuff - Russian technology is that is it is functiuonal but ugly. Is that the same when they get up there in space?

In most cases I'd say you're right. The Russian Soyuz has been used for ~40 years and has only undergone small updates over that time. It is ugly, tiny, and not very capable compared to a Shuttle, but it goes up and down reliably and cheaply. The Shuttle has a slightly better safety record and a much better successful mission record but most significant Soyuz failures happened early in their program (ballistic reentry being the only significant failure I can think of as of late - the crew was fine).

Do you know if the suit you saw was for EVA (spacewalking) or a pressure suit for ascent and entry? The Russian EVA suit, the Orlan (Eagle), is very capable if a little hard to wear. Thomas Reiter has worn both Orlans and U.S. EMU suits and says that he prefers the EMUs. Regardless, the Orlans are very, very reliable.

Maintenance is a huge issue on any space station. Much of the time the astronauts/cosmonauts are doing preventative maintenance on the US and Russian segments of ISS. As the Russian FGB and Service Module on ISS are very similar in design to Mir's core modules it will be interesting to see if the hardware holds up better than it did on Mir (to be fair, Mir was used a lot longer than it was designed for).

Crikey for being Assistant Manager of Fries and Pattie Defrosting at Rotkreuzplatz McDonalds, you're quite clued up on matters of space ninjary

Look at the engine of a Lada Niva. Ancient Fiat engine so I'm told, which never changed in decades of production. Not the highest performance but as long as you had the manual you could repair it yourself. In fact we repaired the carburettor and radiator ourselves in the middle of the desert near Riyadh.

Am I right in suspecting the US stuff may be impressive looking, all the latest technology but very difficult to figure out what is going on under the hood so to speak?

The Niva is one of the toughest, most reliable and competent 4WD machines available. Simplicity beats 22inch rims and 7.8 litres of V8 which'll get you stuck in 2 minutes of leaving tarmac.

I just got certified on the McFlurry machine!

Man we had fun in those Nivas! Used to leave the bigger cars standing in the sand. Usually we started driving on sand after the January rains when the sand was hard to drive on. Those Patrols and Landcruisers would often sink to the axles!

Actually no and I'll use the U.S. ISS CDH system as an example. The distributed computer (called MDMs) network I mentioned above is composed entirely of computers running 386 processors. This is by completely by design. Since each set of computers (one running, the other redundant) is dedicated to a small set of tasks and has an operating system dedicated to just that they don't need a ton of computing power. They also don't have a direct user interface or any type of display which is what eats up MHz in personal computers. The big benefit to using 386s is that they draw very little power and produce very little heat - solar power generation and radiation heat rejection being finite commodities in space. Intel is also on Rev. ZR7 or somesuch of the chip so they're exceptionally reliable. Also, unlike faster processors, the transistors in 386s are far apart which makes them much less likely to be affected by radiation - a big problem for space hardware.

ISS astronauts can, and have, taken the things apart in space, swapped out cards, drives, etc. and they always keep on chugging. TTer winglette wrote the book on MDM maintenance. I mean literally wrote the book - the astronauts have her book on the ISS.

There isn't much on the ISS on either the Russian or US segment that you can't get under the hood of. The biggest problem is spares. Obviously you want systems to be redundant but even redundant items often share common things like design* and power and data paths. Some items on ISS do have spares but you can't have a back-up for everything as space is limited and it costs a lot to put up stuff you probably won't use. This almost became a big problem; one of the theories on the Russian computer crash was that all the power supplies had hard-failed. Without any extras in space spares would have to be launched. The Russians figured the best they could do was bump up a Progress unmanned resupply launch by a few weeks - still at least a month away.

On the whole, the KISS philosophy applies across the ISS. Stuff is designed to requirements, not beyond them, whenever possible. There is plenty of truly cutting-edge and one of a kind type stuff as well, but that is only used when the task really requires it; you don't use a F1 car to get the groceries.

* NASA gave the contract for the Shuttle main flight software to one company and the contract for the backup flight software to another so there would be zero commonality. Similarly, during critical docking operations the ISS Guidance, Navigation & Control system can use either one of two identical American rate gyroscopes or one of two unique Russian rate gyroscopes to maintain attitude.

Then I'd have some faith in them. In my opinion as an old computer fart PCs got too complicated after the 486. In those days you had the chance to at least understand what the hell was going on under the bonnet of a PC. The modern Pentiums with their crappy Windows Extra Problems which don't work as well as the earlier ones are waaaay to complex for me nowadays and a reason I am fed up with computer work. I still enjoy playing with older technology serial port type stuff, but the newer stuff leaves me cold.

Must have gotten lost, been part of a convey or something.

Weapons systems still functioning though, it managed to get some hits on the Shuttle.

@Jeremy, I saw the ISS on the 6th as well. I've seen it before - used to be on a DLR website all the time a few years ago. Lay back on the grass in the garden after dark on those warm nights with the 'traffic list', spotting and naming all the bits of metal drifting past. I like the spinners best, just after dark.

It's been a bloody fascinating week for me. Amongst a lot of other things, I've been responsible for the test piece that secured my partner company's contract to build Herschel, and I'm off to see it in Toulouse being prepared for installation into the launch vehicle in a couple of months. We met the geezer in charge of the manned mission to Mars (Not sure if he's all there or if he's really straight up). Had a few enquiries for telescope optics where when we told them the price they buggered off sharpish (this stuff ain't really cost-effective for most ground-based applications), but we did get one in Bremen that will be operating on the ground... but at 77˚K (and our cryogenic properties are superb). I'm off to Italy in a couple of weeks to sort out the first production batch of mirrors for the laser air-sat comlinks. It's interesting stuff, but will probably mean I don't have as much time to be online anymore. Let's call it a picoflounce.

Hey, what's going on here? First Jeremy threatening to flounce, and now Sin threatening to picoflounce ... who am I going to talk to about all the interesting stuff like astronomy, and rock music. Anyway Sin, glad to hear you got some interesting contracts, but don't start getting big ideas and going in for nanoflouncing. Atto-, femto-, and pico-flounces may be tolerated, but nano-, micro-, and milli-flounces will not. Got that?

Oh, and you wanna watch what you say about those Mars geezers. You never know who might be reading this.

Sin, I didnt know you could speak French!

As an Amateur astronomer asis in complete bloody learner with L plates on me telescope, I am only just starting to grasp the heavens.

Help my tired-and.yes-a-bit-pissed brain: What the buggery hell is a Pico Flounce!

(Took me ages to retype that with the hyphens!)

A picoflounce is so tiny that is not normally picked up by most TT users. Truth is that I strongly suspect I may be having some weeks for the forseeable future where I have other priorities.

Ommmmmmmmmm.

Sin, now I understand what you're on about bud. Drunk in charge of a keyboard huh?

What's amazing is that wemanage to type occasional coherent words into the computer!

Just had a look at some info about Herschel on the ESA web site, and now I realise what it is - it's the project that used to be known as FIRST (Far InfraRed and Submillimetre Telescope). Seems they renamed it Herschel years ago. I really should try to keep up with these things. Nice that they decided to give it a name that the average European non-science-geek person can recognise and feel a little bit proud of. If only somebody could have done the same with the VLT, one of the most impressive European engineering achievements. "What's the VLT?", you ask? Precisely.

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IN COOPERATION WITH THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY:
LIVE and in DIGITAL 3D from the ISS

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July 24 - August 1

'Early Bird Special Ticket Sale' on July 7, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
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Tee-hee!

They shouldnt have let that Teacher on board...

That's exactly what I did when I heard about the gash.

Truth be told, the media is hyping the story because it involves human drama. They could have gone into a comparative analysis of this gash and ones seen before but that would be dry and would ensure no repeat hits as they followed up on the story. I thoroughly expect TZ to latch on to this just like they did two years ago. Expect images of worried toddlers with captions like, „Lieber Gott, bitte lass Mama gesund heimkehren!“



BTW, minor debris damage isn't just common, it's the norm for all reusable spacecraft. What is seen now is far, far smaller than what technicians often see after landing. It used to be just a maintenance issue (the tiles would simply be replaced) but due diligence dictates that it now be analyzed and repaired on orbit if required.

In short: non-issue.

I worked with Barbara Morgan on STS-113/11A when she was the lead ISS CAPCOM. Very cool woman.

The knowledge that even NASA have to go into orbit to exammine these things would have saved me a lot of time in my teenage years.

Space, the final frontier? Hardly.

I meant the current source of trouble, we already had the equivalent of space in Ireland, it was baren and dangerous but also windswept.