After a week of excited late-night neck-craning, people all over Ireland will again be rewarded tonight with a spectacular sight in the skies.
At 10.56pm, the International Space Station (ISS) and the space shuttle Endeavour, will be seen as one for the very first time, making this the biggest man-made object ever assembled in space, according to Astronomy Ireland.
The ISS and Endeavour docked at 6.55pm Irish time, travelling at 17,000 miles per hour.
In total, the two craft weigh 400 tonnes and there are 13 astronauts on board – the all-time record for the number of people in space at one time.
“This is he biggest object ever assembled in space and it should be a thousand times brighter than the brightest star in the sky making this the most incredible sight anyone has ever seen from Ireland,” said David Moore, chairman of Astronomy Ireland.
The organisation has been “inundated” with calls and hits on its website in recent days, Mr Moore said, as millions of people were “mesmerised” by the sights of the shuttle and the space station in the sky at night.
The space station will be visible in Irish skies until July 23rd.
“This is space history in the making and every Irish person has a ringside seat,” Mr Moore said.
The exact time to see the space hardware “blazing across the night sky” can be obtained from Astronomy Ireland, which has set up a special text service to cope with the demand.
Astronomy Ireland claims to be the largest astronomy club in the world relative to population numbers. It currently has about 11,000 members.