Outer Space Stuff

Three members of Expedition 24 (Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson) will be leaving the ISS tonight and are scheduled to land in Kazakhstan on Sept 24 at 12:55 a.m. EDT.

Having launched on April 2, 2010, all three have been in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for nearly six months.

As of 6:56 p.m. EDT, the hatch to the Soyuz has been reported closed and preparations for undocking are currently underway.

Undocking itself is scheduled for 9:35 p.m. and can be seen live, along with full event coverage on NASA TV.

UPDATE: As of 7:15 p.m. EDT, hatch closure problems on the ISS side are being reported. Leak checks underway to verify effective seal.

UPDATE (2): As of 9:35 p.m. EDT, undocking has been delayed due to non-operational hooks on the Poisk module of the ISS. 

It outshone everything else in the late evening sky. And it was moving...

It took mere seconds for me to recognize the object for what it was. I quickly ran inside the house to grab my girlfriend, who had never laid eyes on an orbiting satellite or spacecraft before. When I finally got her outside, the International Space Station (ISS) was almost directly overhead, moving towards the NE.

Personally, I thought it was grand. Not only did we, as a species, put it up there, but actual members of the species are currently living up there! I babbled on for several seconds regarding these intrepid men and women, but to no effect. Unmoved by my sentiment, she muttered a mostly disinterested "cool" and proceeded to question the authenticity of the sighting, believing in the possibility of this brilliantly shining, fast-moving object being nothing more than a common aircraft.

This prompted me (once the ISS faded from view) to go straight to nasa.gov and to pull up the sighting information for proof. Needless to say, it took mere seconds for her to recognize the object for what it was...

Finally, the aforementioned webpage is a great resource for ISS sighting information. Simply enter your country, region, then your city for upcoming viewing times. Speaking of which, I'm off to see the next one here.

Happy viewing everyone.