International Space Station

The International Space Station (ISS) is like a incredible floating house and laboratory that orbits around Earth! This amazing structure is about the size of a football field and travels at 17,500 miles per hour, circling our planet every 90 minutes. The ISS flies about 250 miles above Earth - high enough that astronauts can see the whole curve of our planet but close enough that Earth still looks huge and beautiful out the windows.

Astronauts from many different countries live and work together on the ISS for missions that typically last about six months. Living in space is very different from life on Earth because everything floats! Astronauts have to strap themselves into sleeping bags attached to walls, and their food comes in special packages that won't float away. They exercise for two hours every day to keep their muscles and bones healthy in the weightless environment, and they conduct hundreds of scientific experiments that help us learn about space, medicine, and how things work without gravity.

The ISS has been continuously occupied by astronauts since November 2000 - that means people have been living in space for over 20 years! It was built by 16 different countries working together, including the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and many European nations. You can actually see the ISS with your own eyes when it passes overhead! It looks like a bright star moving quickly across the sky, and NASA has websites and apps that tell you exactly when to look up to spot it from your location.