The International Space Station (click for pic I found on flickr) has recently been orbiting over my neighborhood. It’s incredible. Brightest thing I’ve even seen in the night sky other than the moon. I didn’t have binoculars or a telescope but I could swear that I could see some shape to the thing, which has four pairs of large solar panels.
It’s definitely a point of pride to be able to point up at that shiny thing in the sky and say, “My dad makes that!” Actually, there must be thousands of people working on that thing across the five partners: US, Russia, Canada, Japan, and Europe. The ISS is just chock full of technology, like “smart” chips and parts running embedded software so that astronauts and ground control can monitor everything that goes on. The station also includes sensors that rotate and roll the ISS so that the solar panels are always facing the sun! It doesn’t always make the front page, but the ISS is truly like something straight out of our imaginations.
