A House in Space!
The International Space Station (ISS) is the biggest thing humans have ever built in space! It is as long as a football field and weighs about 900,000 pounds. It orbits (circles around) the Earth about 250 miles up — that is about the distance from New York to Washington, D.C., but STRAIGHT UP!
The ISS zooms around Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. At that speed, it circles the entire planet once every 90 minutes! That means astronauts see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every single day.
16 countries worked together to build the ISS, including the USA, Russia, Japan, Canada, and many European countries. It took over 40 space missions to carry all the pieces up and assemble them. Construction started in 1998 and astronauts have lived on it continuously since November 2000!