International Space Station

Explore humanity’s orbiting laboratory.

A laboratory about 400 km up, circling the planet every hour and a half. Five space agencies from fifteen countries run it together, and people have lived aboard without a break since November 2000 — studying biology, physics and the human body in weightlessness, and testing what longer missions will need.

Loading the station’s position…

Position computed when data arrives from CelesTrak elements. Crew: Launch Library 2.

02Orbit

Around Earth, continuously.

Sixteen sunrises a day, give or take. The station falls around the planet at roughly 7.7 km every second, and the ground slides eastward beneath each lap, so every pass crosses different country.

Loading the orbit…

In sunlightIn Earth’s shadowFaint: the last 45 minutes · Bright: the next 90

Computed with SGP4 from CelesTrak’s published element set. The position is a prediction from that fit, not a live measurement; the error grows with the fit’s age. Sunlit or in shadow is the station’s physical state — the console’s Full illumination option only changes how the globe is drawn, never this. Region names come from a generalised coastline and can be the wrong side of a coast by up to about 200 km.

03See it tonight

See the station from your city.

It needs no telescope. When the station is sunlit and your sky is dark, it crosses as a steady bright point in a few minutes — no blinking, no trail.

Where are you?

Your location is kept in this browser and sent nowhere except as coordinates for the cloud forecast.

04Crew & vehicles

The people and spacecraft on board.

Crews rotate roughly every six months, arriving and leaving on the vehicles docked below. The list here is the current expedition as Launch Library 2 records it.

Loading the crew…

05Live & updates

Life and science in orbit.

Dockings, spacewalks and crew events are broadcast by the agencies that run them. When one is on, it plays here.

Loading the broadcast schedule…

Broadcasts: Launch Library 2 event feed; channels verified with YouTube. Autoplay is off and sound starts only when you press play. A black picture does not mean the station is on the night side — feeds drop for many reasons.

Latest ISS updates

Loading news…

View all ISS updates

06Explore the station

A laboratory built in orbit.

Pressurised modules from five agencies on a truss 109 metres end to end, delivered by forty-two assembly flights. Select a part to see what it does, who built it and when it arrived.

Schematic, top view, forward to the right. The connections between modules are correct; sizes and spacing are not to scale, and Earth- and space-facing modules are drawn beside the modules they are attached to. Configuration as of 2026. Not every module is labelled.

Select a module on the diagram or in the list.

Inside the station

Walk through the inside of the station, from the European laboratory to the Dragon’s window, on footage NASA recorded aboard in October 2022. Scroll to move through it.

Module descriptions: Orbira editorial, checked against the agency pages linked on each card. The model in the 3D view is representative and not to scale; its orientation along the orbit is illustrative, because the station’s attitude is not in any public feed this product reads.

07History

Built over decades. Still evolving.

From one module in 1998 to a laboratory 109 metres end to end — and still changing, as new modules, new arrays and new vehicles arrive.

20 Nov 1998
Zarya reaches orbit
A Proton rocket launches the first module from Baikonur.
NASA — ISS reference ↗
4 Dec 1998
Unity joins it
Space Shuttle Endeavour delivers the first U.S. module on STS-88.
NASA — ISS reference ↗
2 Nov 2000
The first crew moves in
Expedition 1 arrives on Soyuz TM-31. The station has been occupied without a break ever since.
NASA — International Space Station ↗
7 Feb 2001
Destiny, the U.S. laboratory
STS-98 launches the module that becomes the centre of U.S. research aboard.
NASA — ISS reference ↗
7 Feb 2008
Europe and Japan add laboratories
Columbus launches in February and Kibo’s modules follow through 2008 and 2009.
JAXA — Kibo ↗
8 Feb 2010
Tranquility and the Cupola
STS-130 delivers life-support equipment and the station’s seven-window observatory.
ESA — Cupola ↗
8 Jul 2011
The last Space Shuttle flight
STS-135 completes a programme of 42 assembly flights — 37 by the shuttle and 5 Russian.
NASA — Space Station Facts and Figures ↗
25 May 2012
The first commercial cargo ship
SpaceX’s Dragon is berthed, opening resupply to commercial vehicles.
NASA — International Space Station ↗
31 May 2020
The first commercial crew
Crew Dragon Demo-2 docks, the first crew launched from U.S. soil since 2011.
NASA — International Space Station ↗
29 Jul 2021
Nauka docks
Russia’s multipurpose laboratory joins the station, followed by the Prichal node in November.
NASA — ISS reference ↗
2 Nov 2025
Twenty-five years aboard
A quarter of a century of continuous human presence in orbit.
NASA — International Space Station ↗

The station in figures

Mass: 419.7t
Pressurised volume: 1,005m³
Habitable volume: 388m³
End to end: 109m
Parts described: 12
Partners: 5

Figures: NASA — Space Station Facts and Figures ↗, checked 2026-09-24; alternative figures from Launch Library 2. The two sources do not agree on every number, and both change as modules and cargo come and go.

Orbit as recorded by Orbira

Loading the archive…

08What changed

What changed on the ISS?

Everything that happened to the station in the period you choose, from the event feed, the orbit archive and Orbira’s own catalogue comparison — each with its source and its age.

Loading changes…

Follow the ISS. Understand every meaningful change.

← Back to orbit map