The International Space Station is the largest manned object ever sent into space.

 

The International Space Station is the largest manned object ever sent into space.

At 119 yards (109 meters) long, the International Space Station (ISS) sits roughly 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth and is the third-brightest object in the night sky.

• An international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries operates the International Space Station. Learn more about visitors to the space station by country.
• The space station has been continuously occupied since November 2000.
• An international crew of seven people live and work while traveling at a speed of five miles per second, orbiting Earth about every 90 minutes. Sometimes more are aboard the station during a crew handover.
• In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.
• Peggy Whitson set the U.S. record for spending the most total time living and working in space at 665 days on Sept. 2, 2017.
• The acre of solar panels that power the station means sometimes you can look up in the sky at dawn or dusk and see the spaceship flying over your home, even if you live in a big city. Find sighting opportunities at http://spotthestation.nasa.gov.
• The living and working space in the station is larger than a six-bedroom house (and has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree view bay window).
• To mitigate the loss of muscle and bone mass in the human body in microgravity, the astronauts work out at least two hours a day.
• Astronauts and cosmonauts regularly conduct spacewalks for space station construction, maintenance and upgrades.
• The solar array wingspan (356 feet, 109 meters) is longer than the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380 (262 feet, 80 meters).
• The large modules and other pieces of the station were delivered on 42 assembly flights, 37 on the U.S. space shuttles and five on Russian Proton/Soyuz rockets.