Twitter Helps You Spot the Space Station

June 28th, 2009

While I find Twitter to be one of the most useless and boring things out there , I guess it does have some uses .

The International Space Station (ISS) is easy to spot with the naked eye if you know when and where to look. A new notification service on Twitter will tell you exactly when to go out and look up.

Twitter ISS Alerts (@twisst) gives personal up to date info on when and where to spot the space station. Following it can give you a heads up on how to look up and see it between your Cyber Monday celebrations.

Dutch science reporter Govert Schilling and journalist/web developer Jaap Meijers created @twisst, a Twitter service that will tell you when the space station will fly over your location.

There are other sites that also perform the duty of guiding you in the right direction when it comes to satellites.

The orbiting outpost constantly passes over different parts of the planet as it circles Earth every 90 minutes or so. It flies at an average altitude of 216 miles (348 km) and speeds along at 17,200 mph (27,700 kph). It is about as big as a football field and has highly reflective solar panels. It’s the reflection of sunlight that makes it visible from Earth.

Europe will enjoy several passes this week, Schilling said. Good passes will occur for the United States on July 7 and East Asia on July 10.