The International Space Station
A crewed orbital laboratory
The largest structure humans have ever put in space: a laboratory as long as a football field, assembled in orbit over more than a decade by the American, Russian, European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies. It has been crewed without a break since 2 November 2000, by crews who live and work in weightlessness for months at a time.
It circles Earth about every 92 minutes at around 28,000 km/h, so its crew sees some sixteen sunrises a day. Here it flies at its real position, computed from its latest orbital elements, and its modules can be picked out one by one.
Key figures
- Mass
- about 420 t
- Length
- 109 m end to end
- Solar array wingspan
- 73 m
- Pressurised volume
- 916 m³
- One orbit of Earth
- about 92 minutes
- Orbit inclination
- 51.6°
- First module launched
- Zarya, November 20, 1998
- Crewed without a break since
- November 2, 2000
- Usual crew
- 7 people since 2020
- Most aboard at once
- 13 people, in 2009 and 2010
- Run by
- NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA and CSA