The International Space Station (ISS) is a science laboratory in orbit around Earth, where astronauts have lived without a break since November 2000. It is about 109 meters (356 feet) wide, measured across its solar arrays from one end to the other. As of 2026, NASA describes it as the largest object people have ever put in orbit around Earth.

Size

NASA gives the station's span from end to end as 109 meters (356 feet). That is the width the explorer shows, from left to right in its picture. The station's backbone is a long frame of beams called the truss, 94 meters (310 feet) long, with sets of solar arrays at each end. The arrays reach 73 meters (239 feet) in the other direction.

The rooms where the crew lives and works are pressurized, meaning they are filled with air people can breathe. Together they hold 1,005 cubic meters (35,491 cubic feet), which NASA says is about as much as the inside of a Boeing 747. The station's mass is about 420,000 kilograms (925,000 pounds), and it changes as spacecraft carrying crew and cargo arrive and leave.

Size comparisons

• An American football field, 360 feet (109.7 meters) long including the end zones, is about a meter (4 feet) longer than the station is wide.
• The Saturn V rocket that launched astronauts to the Moon stood 111 meters (363 feet) tall, about 2 meters more than the station's width.
• About 64 people 1.7 meters (5 feet 7 inches) tall, lying head to toe, would stretch across it.
• If Earth were shrunk to the size of a basketball, the station would orbit about 7.5 millimeters (0.3 inches) above its surface.
• At that scale, the station itself would be about 2 micrometers (millionths of a meter) across, one-fortieth to one-fiftieth of the width of a human hair.

Built in orbit

According to the European Space Agency, no rocket was big enough to launch a station this size in one piece. Instead, it was carried up in parts and joined together about 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth. The first part, the Russian Zarya module, was launched on November 20, 1998. NASA counts 42 assembly flights, most of them by the U.S. space shuttle.

Robotic arms and astronauts in spacesuits put the parts together, connecting fluid lines and electrical wires. Five space agencies run the station together: NASA and the space agencies of Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. A crew of seven usually lives aboard, and NASA plans to keep the station working until at least 2030.

Seeing it from the ground

The station travels at about 28,800 kilometers per hour (17,900 miles per hour) and goes around Earth in about 92 minutes. Its crew sees 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day. Because its solar arrays are so large, the station can sometimes be seen from the ground at dawn or dusk, even from a big city. NASA's Spot the Station website lists when it will pass overhead.

Sources

• International Space Station Facts and Figures. NASA.
• International Space Station. NASA, 2025.
• Building the International Space Station. European Space Agency.
• Where is the International Space Station?. European Space Agency.
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