International Space Station

Check the pass times for your place: SkyMate shows when it rises, where it appears and how high it gets. Face the direction it will appear from a few minutes early and look for a steady light moving faster than any star, usually from the west toward the east.

The International Space Station is the largest object humans have put into orbit, about the size of a football field. It has been continuously crewed since November 2000, and astronauts from many countries live and work aboard.

It orbits Earth at about 400 km altitude and roughly 28,000 km/h, circling the planet about every 90 minutes, or around 16 times a day.

You don’t need any equipment to see it. The ISS shines by reflecting sunlight, and at its brightest it outshines every star and planet except Venus. It looks like a bright, steady point gliding across the sky, with no blinking lights, unlike an aircraft.

Passes are visible when you are in darkness but the station is still in sunlight: usually in the hour or two after sunset or before sunrise. A pass lasts up to about six minutes. Sometimes the station fades and disappears partway across the sky as it enters Earth’s shadow.

The ISS is planned to be retired around 2030.

The station is the size it is because it was assembled piece by piece in orbit from 1998 onward, with modules and equipment contributed by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. Its huge solar panels are what make it so bright: they reflect a lot of sunlight back to the ground.