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What Is the International Space Station? (Grades 5-8)
This article is for students grades 5-8.
The International Space Station is a large spacecraft in orbit around Earth. It serves as a home where crews of astronauts and cosmonauts live. The space station is also a unique science laboratory. Several nations worked together to build and use the space station. The space station is made of parts that were assembled in space by astronauts. It orbits Earth at an average altitude of approximately 250 miles. It travels at 17,500 mph. This means it orbits Earth every 90 minutes. NASA is using the space station to learn more about living and working in space. These lessons will make it possible to send humans farther into space than ever before.
How Old Is the Space Station?The first piece of the International Space Station was launched in November 1998. A Russian rocket launched the Russian Zarya (zar EE uh) control module. About two weeks later, the space shuttle Endeavour met Zarya in orbit. The space shuttle was carrying the U.S. Unity node. The crew attached the Unity node to Zarya.
More pieces were added over the next two years before the station was ready for people to live there. The first crew arrived on Nov. 2, 2000. People have lived on the space station ever since. More pieces have been added over time. NASA and its partners from around the world completed construction of the space station in 2011.
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Words to Know
Airlock: an air-tight chamber that can be pressurized and depressurized to allow access between spaces with different air pressure.
Microgravity: a condition, especially in space orbit, where the force of gravity is so weak that weightlessness occurs.
Module: an individual, self-contained segment of a spacecraft that is designed to perform a particular task.
Truss: a structural frame based on the strong structural shape of the triangle; functions as a beam to support and connect various components.
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How Big Is the Space Station?The space station has the volume of a six-bedroom house with six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree view bay window. It is able to support a crew of seven people, plus visitors. On Earth, the space station would weigh almost one million pounds. Measured from the edges of its solar arrays, the station covers the area of a football field including the end zones. It includes laboratory modules from the United States, Russia, Japan, and Europe.
What Are the Parts of the Space Station?In addition to the laboratories where astronauts conduct science research, the space station has many other parts. The first Russian modules included basic systems needed for the space station to function. They also provided living areas for crew members. Modules called “nodes” connect parts of the station to each other.
Stretching out to the sides of the space station are the solar arrays. These arrays collect energy from the sun to provide electrical power. The arrays are connected to the station with a long truss. On the truss are radiators that control the space station’s temperature.
Robotic arms are mounted outside the space station. The robot arms were used to help build the space station. Those arms also can move astronauts around when they go on spacewalks outside. Other arms operate science experiments.
Astronauts can go on spacewalks through airlocks that open to the outside. Docking ports allow other spacecraft to connect to the space station. New crews and visitors arrive through the ports. Astronauts fly to the space station on SpaceX Dragon and Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Robotic spacecraft use the docking ports to deliver supplies
Why Is the Space Station Important?The space station has made it possible for people to have an ongoing presence in space. Human beings have been living in space every day since the first crew arrived. The space station’s laboratories allow crew members to do research that could not be done anywhere else. This scientific research benefits people on Earth. Space research is even used in everyday life. The results are products called “spinoffs.” Scientists also study what happens to the body when people live in microgravity for a long time. NASA and its partners have learned how to keep a spacecraft working well. All of these lessons will be important for future space exploration.
NASA currently is working on a plan to explore other worlds. The space station is one of the first steps. NASA will use lessons learned on the space station to prepare for human missions that reach farther into space than ever before.
Career CornerAre you interested in a career that is related to living and working in space? Many different types of jobs make the space station a success. Here are a few examples:
Astronaut: These explorers come from a wide variety of backgrounds including military service, the medical field, science research, and engineering design. Astronauts must have skills in leadership, teamwork, and communications. They spend two years training before they are eligible to be assigned to spaceflight missions.
Microgravity Plant Scientist: These scientists study ways to grow plants in the microgravity environment of space. Growing plants on future space missions could provide food and oxygen. Plant scientists design experiments to be conducted by astronauts on the space station. These test new techniques for maximizing plant growth.
Fitness Trainer: Spending months on the space station takes a toll on astronauts’ bodies. Fitness trainers work with astronauts before, during, and after their space station missions to help keep them strong and healthy. This includes creating workout plans for while they’re living and working in space.
More About the International Space StationInternational Space Station Home Page
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Explore More For Students Grades 5-8Hubble Images Galaxies Near and Far
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Hubble Images Galaxies Near and Far This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the remote galaxy HerS 020941.1+001557, which appears as a red arc that partially encircles a foreground elliptical galaxy. ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Nayyeri, L. Marchetti, J. LowenthalThis NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image offers us the chance to see a distant galaxy now some 19.5 billion light-years from Earth (but appearing as it did around 11 billion years ago, when the galaxy was 5.5 billion light-years away and began its trek to us through expanding space). Known as HerS 020941.1+001557, this remote galaxy appears as a red arc partially encircling a foreground elliptical galaxy located some 2.7 billion light-years away. Called SDSS J020941.27+001558.4, the elliptical galaxy appears as a bright dot at the center of the image with a broad haze of stars outward from its core. A third galaxy, called SDSS J020941.23+001600.7, seems to be intersecting part of the curving, red crescent of light created by the distant galaxy.
The alignment of this trio of galaxies creates a type of gravitational lens called an Einstein ring. Gravitational lenses occur when light from a very distant object bends (or is ‘lensed’) around a massive (or ‘lensing’) object located between us and the distant lensed galaxy. When the lensed object and the lensing object align, they create an Einstein ring. Einstein rings can appear as a full or partial circle of light around the foreground lensing object, depending on how precise the alignment is. The effects of this phenomenon are much too subtle to see on a local level but can become clearly observable when dealing with curvatures of light on enormous, astronomical scales.
Gravitational lenses not only bend and distort light from distant objects but magnify it as well. Here we see light from a distant galaxy following the curve of spacetime created by the elliptical galaxy’s mass. As the distant galaxy’s light passes through the gravitational lens, it is magnified and bent into a partial ring around the foreground galaxy, creating a distinctive Einstein ring shape.
The partial Einstein ring in this image is not only beautiful, but noteworthy. A citizen scientist identified this Einstein ring as part of the SPACE WARPS project that asked citizen scientists to search for gravitational lenses in images.
Text Credit: ESA/Hubble
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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Andrea Harrington’s Vision Paves the Way for Lunar Missions
When future astronauts set foot on Mars, they will stand on decades of scientific groundwork laid by people like Andrea Harrington.
As NASA’s sample return curation integration lead, Harrington is helping shape the future of planetary exploration and paving the way for interplanetary discovery.
Official portrait of Andrea Harrington. NASA/Josh ValcarcelHarrington works in NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Sciences Division, or ARES, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she integrates curation, science, engineering, and planetary protection strategies into the design and operation of new laboratory facilities and sample handling systems. She also helps ensure that current and future sample collections—from lunar missions to asteroid returns—are handled with scientific precision and preserved for long-term study.
“I am charged with protecting the samples from Earth—and protecting Earth from the restricted samples,” Harrington said. This role requires collaboration across NASA centers, senior leadership, engineers, the scientific community, and international space exploration agencies.
With a multidisciplinary background in biology, planetary science, geochemistry, and toxicology, Harrington has become a key expert in developing the facility and contamination control requirements needed to safely preserve and study sensitive extraterrestrial samples. She works closely with current and future curators to improve operational practices and inform laboratory specifications—efforts that will directly support future lunar missions.
Andrea Harrington in front of NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Sciences Division Mars Wall at Johnson Space Center in Houston.Her work has already made a lasting impact. She helped develop technologies such as a clean closure system to reduce contamination during sample handling and ultraclean, three-chamber inert isolation cabinets. These systems have become standard equipment and are used for preserving samples from missions like OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2. They have also supported the successful processing of sensitive Apollo samples through the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program.
In addition to technology development, Harrington co-led the assessment of high-containment and pristine facilities to inform future technology and infrastructural requirements for Restricted Earth Returns, critical for sample returns Mars, Europa, and Enceladus.
Harrington’s leadership, vision, and technical contribution have reached beyond ARES and have earned her two Director’s Commendations.
“The experiences I have acquired at NASA have rounded out my background even more and have provided me with a greater breadth of knowledge to draw upon and then piece together,” said Harrington. “I have learned to trust my instincts since they have allowed me to quickly assess and effectively troubleshoot problems on numerous occasions.”
Andrea Harrington in Johnson’s newly commissioned Advanced Curation Laboratory.Harrington also serves as the Advanced Curation Medical Geology lead. She and her team are pioneering new exposure techniques that require significantly less sample material to evaluate potential health risks of astromaterials.
Her team is studying a range of astromaterial samples and analogues to identify which components may trigger the strongest inflammatory responses, or whether multiple factors are at play. Identifying the sources of inflammation can help scientists assess the potential hazards of handling materials from different planetary bodies, guide decisions about protective equipment for sample processors and curators, and may eventually support astronaut safety on future missions.
Harrington also spearheaded a Space Act Agreement to build a science platform on the International Space Station that will enable planetary science and human health experiments in microgravity, advancing both human spaceflight and planetary protection goals.
Andrea Harrington at the National Academies Committee on Planetary Protection and Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences in Irvine, California.Harrington credits her NASA career for deepening her appreciation of the power of communication. “The ability to truly listen and hear other people’s perspectives is just as important as the ability to deliver a message or convey an idea,” she said.
Her passion for space science is rooted in purpose. “What drew me to NASA is the premise that what I would be doing was not just for myself, but for the benefit of all,” she said. “Although I am personally passionate about the work I am doing, the fact that the ultimate goal is to enable the fulfillment of those passions for generations of space scientists and explorers to come is quite inspiring.”
Andrea Harrington and her twin sister, Jane Valenti, as children (top two photos) and at Brazos Bend State Park in Needville, Texas, in 2024.Harrington loves to travel, whether she is mountain biking through Moab, scuba diving in the Galápagos, or immersing herself in the architecture and culture of cities around the world. She shares her passion for discovery with her family—her older sister, Nicole Reandeau; her twin sister, Jane Valenti; and especially her husband, Alexander Smirnov.
A lesson she hopes to pass along to the Artemis Generation is the spirit of adventure along with a reminder that exploration comes in many forms.
“Artemis missions and the return of pristine samples from another planetary bodies to Earth are steppingstones that will enable us to do even more,” Harrington said. “The experience and lessons learned could help us safely and effectively explore distant worlds, or simply inspire the next generation of explorers to do great things we can’t yet even imagine.”
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