NASA Is Removing Space Station Sighting Website Info
Keith’s note: when I was working at NASA on the Space Station program back in the day one things we’d tell students and the general public was that the space station would be one of the brightest things in the night sky and that it will fly over their house. I have gone outside more times than I can remember just to see it fly over. Ask my neighbors. I always explain to them how to find the flyover times online. When I was in Nepal at Everest in 2009 I went to the Spot the Station website to get ISS flyover times and showed the flyover to a bunch of Sherpa guides who had no idea that this was a thing you could do or that a person who lived up there was in Nepal with me. Now, in a memo sent out on 14 May 2025, NASA is taking the ISS tracking website offline and relying only on cell phone apps. The memo sent out to Spot the Station website uses says “the ability to find sighting opportunities near you will also no longer be available on the website.” At a time when everyone struggles to explain the value and impact of space exploration, shutting off a website like this is counterproductive in the extreme. Apps are great – but why delete a trusted source that has been of global utility for decades – especially one with text messages that have great utility for people with limited Internet access? Full Memo below.
Dear user of the Spot the Station website
Want to see the International Space Station as it passes over your location? Download NASA’s official Spot the Station mobile app, available on iOS and Android mobile and tablet devices, to find viewing opportunities in your local area and receive notifications when the orbiting platform will be visible. The new mobile app expands notification of viewing opportunities in the United States and across the globe, as well as provides additional capabilities to improve user experience.
Beginning on June 12, 2025, users subscribed through the Spot the Station website will no longer receive email or text notifications. Additionally, the ability to find sighting opportunities near you will also no longer be available on the website.
Users are encouraged to transition to our Spot the Station mobile app, here are a few reasons to download:
Push Notifications: You can still receive International Space Station viewing notifications directly to your mobile device based on your exact location.
Augmented Reality: With the power of the augmented reality interface, the app’s built-in compass shows you where the space station is relative to you – which makes it easier to locate the station when passing overhead.
Station Resources: You can keep up with the latest International Space Station science and research that’s happening aboard the orbiting lab with the resources page that links directly to the daily space station blog.
Thank you for being a valued user!
Best regards,
Spot the Station Team
2 responses to “NASA Is Removing Space Station Sighting Website Info”
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I agree with the above complaint. I used to look for an email every day, so I could go out and watch the ISS go by. Loved to tell anyone what I was looking at. It is unbelievable to me how many people don’t even know what is up there. You know, there are a lot of us old people who cannot afford a cell phone. All I have is a desktop computer. I don’t understand how it could be that hard to set up that same website, or update it, to continue to give the same information. In this day and age, surely that does not need a human to run it, just write a program to pull the information from your app. Set it and forget it. Very disappointed to learn this. I was wondering why I wasn’t getting anything after I got out of the hospital. Skywatcher, Christine
This seems really stupid to me. I do not understand the problem of providing the information in a browser. I have a cell phone but I use my desktop whenever possible. I have a script that opens a list of websites every day. It is inconvenient for me to use s cell phone with a tiny display. As a programmer, I do not see why it would be difficult to generate the relevant pages for the website.