INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION TO APPEAR OVER EAST COUNTY

By Tom Lemon

January 30, 2013 (San Diego's East County) -- The International Space Station is returning to the sky over The East County and will be visible tomorrow morning. You don't need a telescope or binocs. The brightest pass will be Thursday morning, January 31, visit the NASA site at this link for times and where to look:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/view.cgi?country=United_States&region=California&city=San_Diego

Meet the ISS crew at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition34/index.html

There's a surprising number of satellites that can be seen. There are spy sats like the "Keyhole" and "Lacrosse" series that are as big as a school bus. TRMM is a regular sight which is the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission operated by JAXA, Japan's Space Agency,  Tiangong 1 is China's space station, where I'm told other Space Stations go to get take-out.

Sadly, most of the objects in orbit are "space junk" with names like Cosmos Rocket, Atlas Centaur Rocket, Mugunghwa Rocket(really?). There are even pieces and parts of rockets and sats with "Debris" in their name. And some debris comes home.

http://www.eclipsetours.com/paul-maley/space-debris-2/



Keep Looking Up!