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SALT LAKE CITY — You can see the space station from your house.
It's the third-brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon, and it's visible to the naked eye if you know where to look.
In celebration of its 12th year of continuously manned operations on the International Space Station, NASA launched a new service that allows the public to be notified of when the station will be flying in their area.
"Spot the Station" allows users to sign up for a text or an email a few hours in advance of when the station will be visible — usually on a clear night around dusk. NASA says users will only be notified of "good" opportunities: those that are high enough in the sky and will last long enough to allow for a good view of the orbiting laboratory.
NASA's Mission Control in Houston, Texas, has a database of 4,600 locations worldwide for which it determines sighting opportunities. For Utah, 30 locations are listed, although NASA says the station is visible for a long distance around each location.
The notifications could come as often as once or twice a week, or as seldom as once a month, depending on the station's orbit.
"Spot the Station" was launched Friday, 12 years to the day when Expedition I first arrived at the station. Since that day, the station has been visited by 204 astronauts and cosmonauts representing 15 different countries.
The ISS program is a joint project by NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.