If you have 7 minutes to spare this evening, plan to watch the I.S.S. fly over. It’s a pretty thrilling thing to see.

Tonight at 8:17 PM, watch the sky to the northwest, and you'll see a very bright star appear, crossing over almost straight overhead, disappearing 7 minutes later in the south-southeast sky.

If you've watched it before, you know. If you never have, you really should.

It's very bright, and you could almost confuse it with a jet, but when you watch for a minute you realize it's WAY higher than any jet and also WAY, WAY faster.

In fact, it's going about 17,500 mph, or 5 miles per second.

If my info sources are right, there are 10 astronauts on board right now. It's crazy to think – there are Russians and Americans, and they continue to work side-by-side despite what's going on down here.

They have a stationary bicycle up there, so if you think about it, when someone is on that bike, they're going faster than any terrestrial bicycle ever could. I occasionally ride bikes with a retired astronaut who spent 6 months up there, and it's too bad he couldn't log his ISS bike rides on Strava because … think of the total miles he's ridden on a stationary bike!!

Anyway, set an alarm to get outside this evening to watch this. Bring a friend or family member(s) and maybe get on the phone with someone else who's way across town, and watch it together. It's really fun.