The International Space Station (ISS) celebrated its 25th anniversary in orbit on December 6, 2023. NASA celebrated with a space-to-Earth call.
The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000. A crew of seven people live and work on the station, traveling at a speed of five miles per second. The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes.
Here are some facts about the ISS
- Speed: The ISS travels 42,650 km around Earth at a velocity of 28,165 kilometers per hour.
- Crew size: The ISS has a crew of seven people, but more may be aboard during a crew handover.
- Orbit: The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes.
“I cannot believe it was 25 years ago today that we grappled Zarya and joined it with the Unity node. Absolutely amazing,” Cabana said in the call with ISS crew members. The space station itself commemorated the occasion on its account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“The station celebrates 25 years of operations today as the Exp 70 crew conducted aging, mental health, and cognition research while continuing ongoing cargo operations,” the station said in a Wednesday post.
Back in September, an international crew of astronauts known as “Crew-6” returned home after a mission to the ISS. The crew featured two NASA astronauts, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
“After spending six months aboard the International Space Station, logging nearly 79 million miles during their mission, and completing hundreds of scientific experiments for the benefit of all humanity, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 has returned home to planet Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a release.
The three-nation crew “demonstrated humanity’s shared ambition to reach new cosmic shores. The contributions of Crew-6 will help prepare NASA to return to the Moon under Artemis, continue onward to Mars, and improve life here on Earth,” Nelson continued.
