I have just recieved the following in email from a friend who works in Air Traffic Control at Manchester Airport,

It is not a wind up or a joke, but true fact, it may be of interest to some of you


Hi all,

On Wednesday 25th March ( late afternoon ) the Space Shuttle Discovery will "undock" from the International Space Station to return to Florida on Saturday.  You can see both of them travelling in tandem on Wednesday 25th March at 7.32 to 7.37pm "weather permitting" as they will be passing quite high in the night sky. Both stay quite close throughout Wednesday night so the Station crew can visually check that Discovery's heat shield tiles are okay for re entry on Saturday.

What you will need to do is to go outside at 7.32pm on Wednesday and stand facing South. Then look over your right shoulder ( West ) and you should see low near the horizon a moving star like object, climbing higher and getting brighter as it approaches you.  ( Don't confuse it with any planes in the sky as planes of course have flashing anti collision lights).
 
By 7.35pm, this "star like object" will be about 50 degrees high above your head ( ie : the horizon is 0 degrees and directly above your head in 90 degrees, so it's roughly half way up ).

The bright star like object is the International Space Station and you should see traveling either just a bit in front of it, or behind it, a fainter moving star which will be the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Both will move on to your left hand side (East) as they fade from view, and by this time ( about 7.37pm ) with them travelling at " 17,000 MPH", they will already be over France !!!
 
Fingers crossed for clear skies and good luck.

D***** *********

Tag

odds on it will either be a cloudy night or pissing down

You can see them both again tonight.

The Shuttle will will rise at 18:53 at 40degrees above West and will track to ESE, and again at 20:27 from 11degrees above West (not bad going, completely around the Earth in about 90 minutes!), each time closely followed by the Intl Space Station about 1 minute later. They're only visible for about 4 mins the first time and 2 mins the second.

Enjoy, you Geeks.

Dense cloud cover on Wenesday, might be better tonight.

Thanks for that Matt, I've got totally clear skies ATM so hoping to see something tonight.

Anyone got the details for tonight|???

I.ve just seen it, only one light though, i'll have another look later

Only just seen this mail off my friend tonight
If you were clouded out last night, NASA say the Shuttle Discovery is staying undocked but along side the Space Station until it returns on Saturday.  So there is still time to see them both.
 
If you want to give it another, go Jumper would be good even colder tonight!!!!    Time for viewing 2 nite is between 8.00pm & 8.04pm . Tomorrow evening 6.52 & 6.58pm  and 8.27 & 8.30pm.

Good viewing. D*************

My son loves looking at the moon through my spotting scope.
I'll have to make sure we check this out.

Cheers
Taffy

The shuttle is about 1 minute in front of the Intl Space Station, at the speeds they're travelling that's a few hundred miles, not what I'd call 'staying alongside'.

http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+Kingdom

Follow the link to get all the timings for a city/town near you in the UK.

http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata

This one will allow you to track many other satellites and stuff in space.

Cheers Scope-eye