This means that opportunities to see the ISS are usually pretty frequent (dependent on your location in relation to the ISS’s orbit). The ISS whizzes around the earth very fast, making a full orbit of the planet every 90 minutes, and travels at a speed of 28,000 km per hour (in comparison to this stat, airplanes fly at a speed of around 900 km per hour). Not only that, but it is one of the brightest objects in the sky (after the sun and the moon), because it is an incredibly good reflector of sunlight. It can be seen because the International Space Station is the earth’s biggest artificial satellite (the moon is the earth’s largest satellite). It moves very quickly, and to us, it seems like as soon as it appears it disappears. To the naked human eye, it looks like a bright star moving across the sky from horizon to horizon for all of us on earth.
You can spot the space station from most places on earth, so long as you have clear night skies. It is a well-known fact that the ISS can be seen from the ground on earth, but you might be wondering why we can see the ISS so clearly but can have trouble seeing other satellites that orbit the earth.
Read on to learn all you will need to know before seeing the ISS. Thankfully for you, we have written this handy guide for you to follow, if you want to spot the ISS from your own part of the world. Maybe you are interested in seeing it for yourself (without having to leave the comfort of solid ground, that is), or have already given it a go and not had much success. Anyone with even the smallest interest in the cosmos knows that you can spot the International Space Station from the ground on earth, but actually knowing where to look, and when, can be a little more tricky.
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