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The International Space Station has grown so big and bright, you can see it even when it is directly in front of the Moon. Oscar Martin Mesonero of Salamanca, Spain, took this picture on April 1st: Click on link below for a larger image (~750 KP) (BE SURE TO CLICK ON THE IMAGE ITSELF TO ENLARGE IT)http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2009/03apr09/Oscar-Martin-Mesonero1.jpg?PHPSESSID=ja5b01lq2khqagamnuk41qbik7 "I recorded the transit using my 8-inch Celestron telescope and a Canon EOS 50D," says Mesonero. "The ISS was much brighter than the lunar background." His snapshot caught the space station passing over the Sea of Nectar (Mare Nectaris). Just to the north...

photo, Stephen Colbert poses in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, … * Stephen Colbert Slideshow:Stephen Colbert WASHINGTON – NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won. The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year. NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report" to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of...

March 20, 2009 — Spanning the length of a football field (including the end zones) and weighing approximately the same as a loaded space shuttle orbiter, the International Space Station's (ISS) integrated truss, or backbone, was completed in orbit this week after nine years of assembly. "We're the largest space structure in all of history and it is really amazing to be on-board," exclaimed ISS Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke on the morning after the final piece of the truss was attached. The 356-foot, girder-like truss supports the station's living modules and laboratories, as well as eight 115-foot solar array...

If you're along the east coast up to about New York City, you **MAY** be able to see the Shuttle just after takeoff tonight. From NYC it should appear about 8 degrees above the south-west horizon and be visible for around 30-90 seconds (so I'm told). Eight degrees above the horizon is **very low** in the sky, so you will need a **clear, unobstructed view of the south-west horizon** (no trees or buildings in the way --very difficult for NYC). A fist held at arm's length represents about 10 degrees of sky, so try holding your fist out at arm's...

The briefcase-sized tool bag drifted away from astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper on Tuesday as she cleaned and lubed a gummed-up joint on a wing of solar panels on the space station.

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS). Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG. The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games. Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected. Orbital outbreak Space news website SpaceRef broke the story about the virus on the laptops that astronauts took to the ISS....

Experts are growing increasingly concerned that the United States will have to rely entirely upon Russia to take astronauts to and from the international space station for at least five years. NASA's dependency upon the Russian Soyuz space capsules and rockets to carry astronauts to the station is the result of a five-year gap between the scheduled retirement of the shuttle in 2010 and the debut of its replacement in 2015. The agency had hoped it could narrow this gap by accelerating the initial launch of the craft to 2013 but announced Monday that because of inadequate funding and technical...

The troublesome toilet aboard the International Space Station appears to be working again, thanks to a replacement pump taken to the station by the shuttle Discovery. “The toilet appears to have been repaired,” said Rob Navias, the commentator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s video channel on the Web, NASA TV (www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/). The single toilet aboard the station has separate systems for dealing with solid and liquid waste, and the systems are designed to work without the help of gravity. The solid waste system was operating properly, but the liquid system, which uses air flow to direct urine and...

ISS = International Space Station To see if the pair will in fact pass and be visible over your particular location, schedules and other important information are available from the website just below (heavens-above.com):http://www.heavens-above.com/ NASA-International Space Station (official website):http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/ Important note for first time Space Station observers: Unless the Station is scheduled to pass 20 or more (depending on your viewing location--obstructions, etc) degrees above the horizon, you may not see it at all. But if the pass IS high enough above your local horizon, it will 'look' like a very bright white star, w/ no blinking or colored lights...

HOUSTON - The international space station's toilet trouble appeared to be taken care of Wednesday after a Russian cosmonaut replaced a malfunctioning pump. The space station's toilet broke two weeks ago. The problem — confined to the urine side of the commode — forced the orbiting outpost's crew of an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to flush manually with extra water several times a day. Space shuttle Discovery brought up a new pump for the toilet, as well as the space station's newest room, a $1 billion Japanese lab. Oleg Kononenko spent more than two hours installing the new...

From spaceweather.com for Monday, May 19, 2008: The 2008 "ISS Marathon" gets underway this week when the International Space Station spends three days (May 21-23) in almost-constant sunlight. Sky watchers in Europe and North America can see the bright spaceship gliding overhead two to four times each night. Please try our new and improved Simple Satellite Tracker to find out when to look. The station is not only bright and easy to see with the naked eye, but also it makes a fine target for backyard telescopes: "I took these pictures during the early morning hours of May 12th using...

If you have ever wondered what they have built at the space station...have a look .... This is a great animation showing all the segments of the Space Station, the modules and the international partners that have helped create it. This is what we've been hauling in Shuttle flights for the past several years! This is far more complex and larger than most people know about...

The space shuttle Endeavour and the international space station will be visible to Antelope Valley residents early each morning for more than a week beginning Sunday. The Endeavour mission, to deliver the first component of a Japanese science laboratory and a Canadian robotic system to the station, is scheduled to end with a landing at 5:33 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, in Florida. The shuttle-space station combination will look like a very bright star moving steadily as they arc through the sky. If no variations are made to the flight plan, the only evening sighting of the shuttle and space station...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Endeavour pulled up to the international space station and docked Wednesday, kicking off almost two weeks of demanding construction work. Before the late-night linkup, Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie, guided the shuttle through a 360-degree backflip to allow for full photographic surveillance. It's one of the many safety-related procedures put in place following the Columbia tragedy in 2003. The space station crew used cameras with high-powered zoom lenses to photograph Endeavour from nose to tail, especially all the thermal tiles on its belly. The pictures — as many as 300 — will be scrutinized by...

Space freighter primed for launch By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News The development of Europe's ATV has taken 11 years Mission Guide: Jules Verne Europe is set to launch the biggest, most sophisticated spacecraft in its history. The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is an unmanned ship that can carry up to 7.6 tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Its other primary role is to push the orbiting outpost higher into the sky to keep it from falling back to Earth. The ATV will launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronauts added a new room to the international space station on Friday in the way of Harmony. That's the name of the school bus-size compartment that was attached by a team of spacewalkers working outside and robot arm operators working inside. "I don't know that anybody's ever told our crew that we bring harmony with us, but we sure bring fun," Discovery's commander, Pamela Melroy, said as the spacewalk ended and the congratulations began. The Italian-built Harmony — 24 feet long and 31,000 pounds — was unloaded from the shuttle's payload bay and hoisted into place...

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - A crew that includes Malaysia's first astronaut and an American who will become the first woman to command the international space station prepared Monday for blastoff later this week. The Soyuz-FG rocket is scheduled to blast off from the Central Asian steppe on Wednesday night to take Malaysia's Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, Peggy Whitson of Beaconsfield, Iowa, and Russian Yuri Malenchenko into orbit. During his 12-day space trip, Shukor is to study of the effects of microgravity and space radiation on cells and microbes, as well as experiments with proteins for a potential HIV vaccine. The rocket —...

CONTRACT RELEASE: C07-028 NASA Awards Contract for Space Station Hardware HOUSTON - NASA has signed a $46 million fixed price basic contract with S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Public Corporation, also known as RSC Energia, in Korolev, Russia, for various hardware items and their integration into the International Space Station. The basic contract includes $19 million to purchase a Russian-designed toilet system with a privacy enclosure and additional space station equipment. The additional equipment includes a spare depress air pump used to conserve air when the crew exits the Quest airlock for a spacewalk; technical and engineering support for...

Hoping for the best, space station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov hot wired two computers aboard the international space station today that engineers had feared were victims of fatal power supply failures. To everyone's delight, the machines promptly booted up and appeared to be running normally, two more successes in an improbable recovery from crippling computer crashes last week. Two of the three computers making up the Russian segment's guidance, navigation and control computers, along with two of three central control computers, were successfully revived Friday when Yurchikhin and Kotov used jumper cables to bypass suspect surge...

HOUSTON - A new set of solar panels gleamed in the sunlight Tuesday on the international space station as the freshly installed array started opening up. The first pair of solar wings was fully deployed by early afternoon. The other solar panel would be unfurled later in the day. It's a slow process. Each wing is unfolded halfway, then allowed to warm in the sun for about 30 minutes to prevented the solar panels from sticking together. The installation of the new array — part of the station's third pair of solar panels — started on Monday, when two astronauts...