Space Center Houston

International Space Station

Traveling 250 miles above the Earth at 17,500 mph, the International Space Station (ISS) will be 361 feet long when completed in 2006, as big as two football fields side by side.  It’s taken the cooperation of 16 nations to make the ISS a reality, and it will require separate flights to assemble.
The ISS is the largest International peacetime scientific program in history.  The ISS team is led by the United States, with Mission Control-Houston having overall authority for operations and all phases of the program.

The ISS will establish an unprecedented state-of-the-art laboratory complex in orbit.  Research in the station’s six labs will lead to discoveries in medicine, materials and fundamental science that will benefit people all over the world.  Through its research and technology, the station will also serve as an indispensable step in preparation for future human space exploration.  The completed station will be powered by almost an acre of solar panels and have a mass of almost one million pounds.  The pressurized volume of the station will be comparable to the space inside two Boeing 747 jumbo jets.