THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: HUMANITY'S OUTPOST

Right now, as you read this, people are living 250 miles over your head — and they have been, without a single day's interruption, for more than a quarter century.

A MILLION POUNDS AT 17,500 MPH

The International Space Station is the largest structure humans have ever assembled in space: roughly a million pounds, with a solar array wingspan longer than a football field, circling the Earth every 90 minutes.

ASSEMBLED IN ORBIT

Construction began with a single module in 1998 and required dozens of launches and hundreds of spacewalks — pieces built on different continents, by countries that spent the Cold War aiming missiles at each other, fitting together perfectly the first time they ever touched.

A QUARTER CENTURY OF CREWS

Since November 2000, the station has never once been empty.

An entire generation has grown up on a planet where humans permanently live in space — the quietest astonishing fact of our era.

THE SCIENCE OVERHEAD

Thousands of experiments in medicine, materials, and biology have flown, and the station's greatest experiment is itself: decades of data on what long-duration spaceflight does to the human body.

Every plan for the Moon and Mars is written on ISS findings.

THE ISS IS THE LARGEST COLLABORATION IN HUMAN HISTORY — AND IT
PASSES OVER YOUR HOUSE EVERY DAY.