The International Space Station is slowly falling due to atmospheric drag

The International Space Station is powered entirely by large solar arrays

Launched in 1998, its original solar panels were designed to withstand no more than 20 years of wear from temperature swings and micrometeoroid impacts in space. Replacement panels that roll out like carpets have since been installed.

Watch a visualization of what it would look like to move along Earth's surface as fast as the International Space Station, or about 23 times the speed of sound.

Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station

The ISS is the largest human-made object in space. Its modules were meticulously connected by robotic arms and astronauts during slow, careful spacewalks, creating a structure with over eight miles of electrical wire.

Atmospheric drag is causing the Hubble Space Telescope to drift toward Earth slowly

Without interventions to boost the observatory to a higher orbit, Hubble is expected to fall to Earth's surface in the mid-2030s. In the meantime, the telescope is expected to continue to be productive by shifting its mode of operation to rely on a single gyroscope, down from three.

When retired, the International Space Station will undergo a controlled de-orbit

With plans to transition low-Earth orbit operations to private entities, the ISS is expected to be retired by 2030, using a SpaceX de-orbit vehicle. Although reentry will burn up most hardware, NASA intends for any surviving debris to fall into an uninhabited ocean area.

Satellites in low Earth orbit can experience changes in their orbits due to shifts in solar activity, which alter the amount of energy Earth's atmosphere receives and its resulting density.

Visualize the impact of approximately 9,000 metric tons of satellites and space debris orbiting Earth—70% of which, including the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope, do so in low Earth orbit.

Space trash forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter

An inactive Russian satellite broke up into nearly 200 pieces, prompting astronauts on the space station to take shelter in a docked spacecraft and a capsule that could be used to escape in case of emergency.

Watch what it’s like to spend a day on the International Space Station

Microgravity makes personal care more complex on the International Space Station, where stray, floating materials must be captured to prevent them from entering vents and clogging filtration vents. No-rinse shampoo, water pouches, and other strategies help minimize obstructions.

Most elements of the International Space Station were installed over two decades

Space shuttles delivered storage carriers, docking compartments, airlocks, solar arrays, and labs, which were assembled in low Earth orbit. The station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm, alongside maneuvering spacewalkers, has assisted with this assembly since its installation in 2001.

Space trash is making low Earth orbit increasingly dangerous for spacecraft

Millions of fragments from satellites, rockets, and other spacecraft that are no longer operational move thousands of meters per second as they circle Earth. Even a piece of debris a centimeter in size can cause mission-ending damage to space stations, telescopes, and astronauts.

Simulations suggest that a paper airplane launched from the International Space Station would maintain its orientation and gradually descend for 3.5 days before chaotically tumbling down and burning up.

Technologies developed for the ISS have brought benefits to people on Earth

About 93% of water used onboard the International Space Station is recycled through filtration and purification systems that have since been used in regions lacking access to clean water. Treatments to mitigate bone loss and muscle atrophy in astronauts can also help aging adults.

Astronauts follow strict schedules to mimic Earth days and stay healthy in space

Experiencing 15 sunrises and sunsets a day while aboard the International Space Station, visitors preserve their circadian rhythms and mental health with fixed timetables. Astronauts have described sleep as living in a vacuum cleaner due to ongoing air filtration.

Explore a timeline of the International Space Station National Lab

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan called for establishing a human presence in space, which began with NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev on November 2, 2000. Humans have continuously occupied the ISS every day since.

By 2028, a space trash-avoiding maneuver is expected to occur every 18 seconds

As the number of active Starlink satellites increases, greater efforts will be required to keep low Earth orbit free of debris, sparking a new technological space race. NASA has found that using lasers to manage small and medium debris could save up to $9B over 30 years.

Watch a livestream of Earth from the International Space Station

The feed is made possible by the SpaceTV-1 camera system, which is live over 20 hours a day. Video replays are shown during routine loss of signal communications with the inter-satellite link relaying the video data.

NASA has partnered with several private companies to promote commercial space stations

The retirement of the International Space Station in 2030 has led NASA to refocus its efforts on continuing microgravity research through private partnerships, including the support of multiple commercial space stations' design and development.

Watch how dozens of everyday human tasks are performed in space

This playlist features clips of astronauts aboard the International Space Station explaining how they cook, eat, sleep, and conduct research in microgravity. Other activities to pass the time, including watering plants and playing soccer, are also shown.

Excluding using another planet's gravity to redirect the object, it takes less energy for a spacecraft to leave the solar system than to hit the sun.

Since 2019, a free-floating robotic system named Astrobee has helped astronauts with routine tasks on the International Space Station.

Read about every visitor to the International Space Station

The US has sent the most astronauts to the ISS, with 170 visitors, followed by 64 from Russia, 11 from Japan, and nine from Canada. American astronauts Michael E. Lopez-Alegria and Peggy A. Whitson and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko and Fyodor Yurchikhin have the most trips, with five each.

Oxygen is produced in the International Space Station from recycled water, which is split into hydrogen and oxygen gases using an electric current.

Emulating Earth’s light-dark cycle is important for astronaut health and safety

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station experience 16 daily sunrises, but scientists have learned to try to promote circadian rhythms by phasing through several light settings aboard the ISS to improve astronauts’ sleep and productivity.

The crew of the ISS creates unique memorials for deceased colleagues

The continued human occupancy of the International Space Station since 2000 has led to the development of social and cultural elements by crew members, which the ISS Archaeology Project has catalogued. Records of handmade cakes, decorations, and memorabilia highlight the human aspect of living in space.

Guide a ship to dock at the International Space Station

Dozens of ships dock at the ISS yearly, rotating astronaut crews and delivering supplies. This simulation lets you try docking a SpaceX Dragon 2 using the same interface and controls as NASA astronauts.

Scientists have proposed using lasers to push space trash into Earth's atmosphere

Such projects would allow most debris to burn up and no longer pose a risk to active satellites, telescopes, and astronauts on space stations. Enacting these plans would require substantial investments from private and governmental space agencies and overcoming international laws that prevent the removal of another country's space equipment.

Astronauts exercise on the International Space Station

Astronauts maintain bone, muscle, and cardiovascular health with physical activity. It's crucial that they make time to exercise for approximately two hours per day. This resource offers a behind-the-scenes look at how high-intensity workouts help prevent muscle atrophy, bone density loss, and aerobic decline during monthslong space missions.

Because it loses more atmospheric gas to outer space than the cosmic dust it collects as it moves through space, the Earth loses about 50,000 metric tons of mass every year.

Planets' high orbital speeds prevent them from falling into their host star

Although the gravitational force attracts a planet and the star it orbits around, the large speed the planet orbits with, which is acquired during its formation process, causes it to continuously miss the star as it orbits around it. This is analogous to theoretically throwing a baseball horizontally faster and faster until it's fast enough to orbit the Earth while attempting to fall to its surface.

Explore an interactive diary of the International Space Station

The tool enables users to learn about the daily events that occurred on the ISS since continuous human occupancy began on November 2, 2000. Upon selecting a date in the calendar, users can explore activity logs, relevant news, and multimedia content, including videos, photographs, and audiologs, from the onboard crew.

View a 3D visualization of how space shuttles were built and launched into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Enough sunlight hits Earth in just 90 minutes to power the planet for an entire year

Despite this, in 2023, only 5.1% of electricity in the US came from solar energy. Solar panel technology has nonetheless made significant advancements since the 19th century, largely due to NASA's efforts in the space race.

Who’s in space right now?

Hundreds of people (and a few animals) have been to space since the first creatures flew past the Kármán line in 1947. There are a handful of astronauts aboard the International Space Station at any time, while others may be cresting space in...

A SpaceX spacecraft's battery debris survived reentry and crashed into a Florida home

Although NASA expected the debris to disintegrate after it was jettisoned from the International Space Station in 2024, the flight support component survived reentry. No injuries were reported from the incident.

In 2018, SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit for publicity

As of February 2023, the vehicle and its mannequin driver—dubbed "Starman"—have completed three and a quarter revolutions around the sun. One paper estimated that the car has a 22% chance of crashing into Earth within the next 15 million years.

Gravity assists are crucial for space travel beyond Mars

By traveling near a moving celestial object, a passing object can gain or lose speed and change direction due to the acceleration provided by their mutual gravity. Some missions are planned around spacecraft performing multiple assists, or slingshots, to reduce fuel requirements for long-distance travel.

Space-bound rockets contain four major systems—structure, propulsion, payload, and guidance—and operate in stages, with different sections burning through their fuel before breaking off, to reduce dead weight and improve efficiency.

Explore a series of NASA visualizations tracking satellites and space debris

The series illustrates the population of objects orbiting Earth as of February 2024, using data from US Space Command. These include active satellites, defunct spacecraft, rocket bodies and debris fragments larger than roughly 10 centimeters in low Earth orbit.

Microgravity environments reduce muscle mass and bone density

Muscles that assist with balance and resistance to gravity are not subjected to their usual workload on the International Space Station. See the type of exercises that astronauts must complete for roughly two hours daily, and learn why these movements are necessary to preserve astronauts' muscles, bones, and cardiovascular health.

View the docket of future SpaceX launches

SpaceX has established an efficient schedule for launches of ISS crew shuttles and Starlink satellites, with blastoffs occurring just under once every four days in 2023—a pace that has since accelerated as the company has won more contracts.

Understanding why suction cups rely on Earth's atmosphere to work

When pressed against a surface, air is squeezed out of a sealed volume, causing the internal pressure to drop below the surrounding atmospheric pressure, and this imbalance creates the "sticking." For this reason, astronauts do not use suction cups or related technologies to stay on spacecraft during spacewalks.

There are trillions of pieces of space trash that are too small to be tracked

Although scientists monitor more than 24,000 pieces of large orbital debris, space junk can be as small as a paint fleck. The density of this trash is steadily increasing with the growth of the space industry on Earth.

The International Space Station is made up of two incompatible segments

Before collaborating due to financial difficulties, Russia and the US had independently been working on developing their own space stations. A specialized adapter was created to connect the Zarya and Unity modules and create the foundation for the ISS.

As of 2025, over 131 million pieces of debris orbit Earth

These pieces range in size from a grain of sand to the size of a bus and orbit with an average speed of 10 kilometers per second.

Space archaeology studies space trash in the context of heritage and social meaning

Some orbiting objects, such as Elon Musk's Tesla, have symbolic or historical importance, despite being functionally worthless. The oldest human-made object in Earth's orbit is Vanguard 1, a grapefruit-sized satellite launched in 1958. The strangest may be an experimental, inflatable space station containing live cockroaches.

Astronauts on the International Space Station have tested an algae-powered bioreactor that converts carbon dioxide, water, and light into oxygen and edible, protein-rich biomass.

Research suggests the cleanliness of the ISS may make astronauts unhealthy

The International Space Station's sterile conditions deprive astronauts of the opportunity to strengthen their immune systems through microbial exposure. To address this problem, future missions may use probiotic-based cleaners and foster diverse microbes in space habitats.

Thermodynamics makes building data centers in space to cool equipment impractical

Rather than cooling via interactions with flowing cold air or water, data centers in space would dissipate energy primarily by radiation, in which an object at any temperature above absolute zero emits light. This method is much less efficient at cooling and would require hyperscale data centers to have radiator panels thousands of times larger than those on the International Space Station.

See who is in space right now

Over 600 people have been in space since the space race took off decades ago, with roughly 10 in space at any given time, typically operating the world's growing number of space stations. This fun, simple tracker keeps up on who is in space right now and provides links to each space traveler's profile.