PARIS – Residents in Oxford and Androscoggin counties and the surrounding area might have some of the best views of the International Space Station and Space Shuttle as they fly tandem over the night sky this week.

“If we are lucky enough to have the Shuttle and ISS pass over us shortly after they separate, we will be treated to one very bright object being followed by another,” said Rick Chase, who teaches an adult education course on the use of telescopes at the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

Space Shuttle Endeavour, which launched from Cape Canaveral on Nov. 14 and is scheduled to land Nov. 29, is the 124th space shuttle flight and the 27th flight to the International Space Station.

The seven-member crew has been sent to the space station, which celebrated its 10th anniversary Thursday, to do repair work in preparation for long duration missions in the future.

The sightings began Wednesday when both the space shuttle and the international space station could be seen in the Oxford Hills and Lewiston areas for about one minute, low in the south-southeastern sky. A better opportunity came Friday night when both were visible slightly higher in the sky for a full four minutes.

“You have to be looking at dawn or at dusk pretty much to see it,” explained Lynette Madison, a public affairs officer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “You need at least two minutes or more for the better sightings.”

The bonanza will come on Monday night when the shuttle and international space station are still docked together and, with clear weather, should be visible to everyone in this area beginning in the southwest at 4:50 p.m. and going almost across the sky, disappearing into the east-northeast sky three minutes later.

Madison said the Lewiston and Norway areas have significantly more sightings of this shuttle mission than other parts of the country including, Titusville, Fla., which sits just across the Indian River from where the shuttle launched and is expected to land.

“It really depends on the orbit the two are in this time. It changes every day. It’s elliptical,” Madison said. Viewers should look for something that appears to be a slow-moving star, she said. “It depends on where it is and what time of day you see it.”

The final passover of both vehicles will be Friday, Nov. 28, when the International Space Station and shuttle could be visible for four minutes in the west-northwest, traveling to the northeast sky for four minutes. It will be at a maximum elevation of 21 degrees at that time. The two will also be undocked at that point, Madison said, as the shuttle prepares for landing at Cape Canaveral on Nov. 29 at 1:23 p.m.

The sightings are particularly important as the last space shuttle is scheduled to be retired after nearly 30 years of flight in 2010 after completing its primary goal, the assembly of the ISS. Eventually it is to be replaced with the new Orion spacecraft that is scheduled to be ready to launch in 2014.

For Chase, who has been teaching the observatory training course class since 2001, it’s an opportunity to continue a lifelong interest in astronomy.

“My interest in astronomy developed very early, when I was about 6 years old,” he said. “The next year, when I was 7, the first artificial satellite was launched and the space race was soon in high gear. This naturally fueled my interest,” he said of Explorer I, which was launched in 1958 in response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnick I a year earlier.

Chase said when he was about 10 years old he received his first “real” telescope, which in retrospect was extremely limited and difficult to use but did give him his first close-up view of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn.

“When I was in college, my parents bought me a much nicer 60 mm retractor, which I still use occasionally,” he said. In 1990 he purchased a large, 16-inch reflector telescope.

“I have viewed hundreds of interesting celestial objects over the years with the telescope,” he said. Unfortunately, Chase added, the shuttle sightings are too early in the evening for his students to watch with him during his class although he has been out nightly watching the flyovers.



Earth Station Andover

Satellite sightings are not new to residents in Oxford County where the Andover Earth Station was constructed in the early 1960s to receive signals from Telstar 1, the first active communication satellite launched from Cape Canaveral on July 10, 1962. It was the first satellite designed to transmit telephone and high speed data communications. The Telstar High School in Bethel was named after the satellite.

The station was part of a multinational agreement between AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, NASA, the British General Post Office and the French National Post Telegraph and Telecom Office to develop satellite communications over the Atlantic Ocean.

Bell Labs built the Andover Earth Station in Andover where, according to a May 1962 National Geographic article by Rowe Findley, AT&T built a 340-ton aluminum steel antenna to both transmit and receive signals from Telstar 1. Andover was chosen as the site because of its easterly position and ability to keep watch on satellite signals across the Atlantic Ocean.

Telstar 1 relayed its first television pictures (of a flag outside the Andover Earth Station) to Pleumeur-Bodou in France on the date of its launch. The first broadcast was to have been remarks by President John F. Kennedy, but according to Wikipedia online, the signal was acquired before the president was ready, so the lead-in time was filled with a few moments of a televised major league baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

Telstar 1 also relayed the first telephone call transmitted through space. The satellite stations are still visible today in the mountains but the site has been closed to the public. The Telstar 1 satellite went out of service on Feb. 21, 1963, but remains in orbit around the earth, according to the U.S. Space Objects Registry, a governmental agency.

When to see the spacecraft

To view a schedule of sightings go to www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings.

Once on the site, plug in a local town, such as Norway or Lewiston, to see the exact coordinates for sightings. Although the shuttle is set to land Nov. 29, the sight listings are extended beyond that date.

“That’s in case they have to extend the mission,” said Johnson Space Center public affairs officer Bill Jeffs, who noted things such as bad weather may delay a landing. “Certainly we’re still scheduled to land on the 29th, but we may be out there a few more days.”