(The ground-based photo provided in the link above shows the shuttle with the support structure in an open position.) Only the tip of the shuttle’s right wing is visible it sticks out as a slim white triangle between the gray scaffolding and the rocket booster. The orbiter itself is “in front of” (to the left in the image) the booster and fuel tank, but it is almost completely hidden by the support scaffolding, which swings away from the spacecraft before the final countdown to launch. The tip of the bright orange external fuel tank is clearly visible, with the white, solid rocket booster snug up next to it. This image from the Ikonos satellite shows Discovery on launch pad 39B on April 8, 2005. Cape Canaveral is roughly in the middle of Florida’s eastern coastline, just over 75 kilometers (about 50 miles) east of Orlando, and the forecasted path for Dennis as of July 8 called for the storm to swing wide of eastern Florida and head toward the Gulf of Mexico. However, China and Russia and a few private companies are planning to create other stations in near future.Although they were keeping a cautious eye on Hurricane Dennis as it moved through the Caribbean, NASA flight operations officials decided to leave the Space Shuttle Discovery on its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 8, 2005, in anticipation of the scheduled launch-July 13, weather permitting. Previous space stations, which either became defunct or fell on the earth, included Russia's Almaz, Salyut series and Mir, Nasa's Skylab and China's Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2. As of today, the ISS (operational and permanently inhabited) is the only fully functional space station in the earth's orbit. As of December 2018, the station is expected to operate until 2030. Roscosmos has endorsed the continued operation of the ISS through 2024. The station is divided into two sections: the Russian orbital segment, operated by Russia and the United States orbital segment, which is shared by many countries. It maintains an orbit with an average altitude of 400 km by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda service module or visiting spacecraft. The station is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific experiments are conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields. The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The ISS is the only habitable artificial satellite in the low-earth orbit and it's a multi-national collaborative project between five participating space agencies NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).
In fact, you can track the real-time movement of the ISS on this website. Just register yourself at this website and it will keep alerting you about its movement and when exactly it will pass over your city. US space agency NASA runs a website - Spot The Station - dedicated to tracking the movements of the ISS and tells you the most suitable time to view it in the coming days. The ISS can be sighted from your city in the future. For people living in other cities who will miss this opportunity this time, don't get disheartened. That is the reason that though the ISS can be sighted from these cities on other days of this week too, the view tonight will be the best view possible as it will pass over at nearly 90 degrees angle. The ISS is visible before or after sunrise or sunset. Though the four cities will have the best sighting if clouds are not there, people in nearby cities like Vadodara, Agra and Chandigarh will also be able to sight the ISS but at an angle. ISS will be visible after 8.30 pm - can be sighted for approximately 5-6 minutes at around 8:35 pm in Rajkot and Ahmedabad, and around 8:37 pm in Delhi and Jaipur. Tonight, the ISS will be flying right over these Indian cities at an angle of nearly 90 degrees and give you the perfect opportunity to get a glimpse of the human habitable satellite but only if you have a cloudless sky. Though not a rare phenomenon, the ISS is easy to spot like a bright star with naked eyes as it is the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, and circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits every day. NEW DELHI: If you live in Delhi, Jaipur, Rajkot or Ahmedabad, you can spot the International Space Station in the sky tonight (Tuesday night).