Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "iss"

At last I have seen it, three times this week. On Monday night my other half came home to find our neighbour, smart phone in hand, gazing at the sky. He was waiting for the International Space Station and within a few seconds they were watching it appear over Ken's garage. I was most envious, but soon our smart phone had the app; all we had to do was figure out how to work it. On Wednesday night we speeded up a committee meeting and ushered everyone out of the house. By 9.48pm we were standing in the middle of the road, not sure which way to look, then decided to stumble through the dark house to the back garden. Between 9.50pm and 9.54pm we watched the bright light appear above our roof, arc across the sky then gradually fade before it reached the horizon.
I wrote about ISS in my November 1st 2013 Sandscript Blog, inspired by hearing Colonel Chris Hadfield's 'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth' serialised on BBC Radio4.
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At the time, a visit to the NASA website got me interested in ISON 'Comet of the Century'.
After 4.5 billion years at the edge of the Solar system and 3.5 billion years plunging towards the Sun, ISON came within 750,000 miles of the Sun's surface in November and was lost. There would be no light show in the winter skies and I didn't get Hadfield's book for Christmas.
A loss for bloggers and writers, but not for scientists; in the same spirit as the International Space Station, Worldwide collaboration observing ISON has enabled a massive collection of data.
With our long wet winter the comet would no doubt have been hidden from us by heavy cloud.
Clear skies this week enabled us to watch the ISS on Friday and last night; its height above us the mileage it would take us to reach the north of England, the 92 minutes it takes to orbit the Earth the time many people spend commuting to work.

On the south coast this morning it was mild grey and wet; in Baikonur, Kazakhstan there was a blue sky above the frozen Steppes.
They have become as regular as buses, occasionally on clear nights we watch it cross 250 miles above our roof, but this week we are taking more interest than usual. At 11.03 GMT I watch a perfect lift off, a Russian Soyuz rocket vibrates the television, on board are Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko, US astronaut Tim Kopra and a real British astronaut. Tim Peakes, Star City and the Cosmodrome have become part of our lives in the last few days, years of preparation condensed into a Horizon programme.
I have to go out but arrive back in time to catch up with live coverage. After six-and-a-half hours, at 17:33 GMT, their capsule successfully docks with the International Space Station. We have a Christmas dinner to go to and miss the moment two-and-a-half hours later when the hatch finally opened and the ISS crew welcomed the three newcomers on board. Tim Peake, previously an army major and helicopter pilot, will spend six months on board the space station orbiting the Earth. He has spent six years training to become the first professional British astronaut to be employed by the European Space Agency.
His wife is cool, capable and very supportive, she and I have one thing in common, we’ve both been left to do all the Christmas cards.
Meanwhile back on tonight’s news we were able to see Tim on board and catch up with the enthusiasm of children around the country; Tim’s own son jumping up and down in excitement as the rocket took off, pupils at Tim’s old primary school, children at the science museum. Equally excited are the television experts seeing the scientists of tomorrow. It does not matter what nationality the space heroes are, the International Space Station is proof of what cooperation between countries can achieve, it is literally above the turmoils of the world.

I have written in previous blogs, 2013 and 2014, about the ISS.

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