Like A String Of Pearls

I was out walking the little fugger this evening and glancing at my watch. I usually don’t care how much time a walk takes, but tonight was a bit different. I had a date with a dark spot and an overhead view. And because the thing I wanted to see travels at thousands of kilometers per hour, timing was critical.

I grabbed PJ, scurried up to the roof of my building and waited. At 10:32 PM EDT, the International Space Station appeared in the NNW followed a second later by the Space Shuttle. They were right on schedule. I could follow the two bright objects rising out of the clouds in the west, racing towards the planet Jupiter, eventually disappearing into the earth’s shadow.

It is quite easy to spot the ISS, if you know when and where to look. A fellow named Chris Peat runs a really nifty website that will give you satellite overpass predictions for wherever you are in the world at www.heavens-above.com. The really neat thing about tonight’s pass was seeing the shuttle tagging along for the ride in such close proximity. That’s a rarity. The two separated at 10:42 this morning, and after the shuttle circled the station for some photographs, an engine burn was initiated at 12:28PM to start the shuttle’s journey home. They were still attached yesterday, and would have made for a lovely overpass, had I not been guzzling Korean BBQ with PJ and Sassinak.

The ISS is quite bright when it’s flying by, and the added bulk of the shuttle would have made it even brighter. It has been interesting to watch it get brighter with each passing year, as the astronauts and cosmonauts continue their orbital tinkering. It’s a great thing to know that all of the international cooperation is paying off. The pictures and reports that come back from orbit are nice, but there’s something special about looking up from the roof of my home and seeing it, flying by at 25,200 km/h. That’s way faster than Grendel and I walking up to Bloor St and back.

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Just after I hit the publish button for the first time, I checked the position of the ISS, and found that it was over the Phillipines heading out over the Pacific Ocean towards Alaska. There are no speed traps in space.