Mondo Knows Facts
The space station circles Earth every 90 minutes
It travels at about 7.7 kilometres a second at 400 kilometres altitude The station completes roughly 16 orbits a day, so its crew sees 16 sunrises. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000. Its solar arrays span about 73 metres, wider than a football pitch is long. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Crews have printed tools on the space stationA 3D printer removed the need to launch every replacement partThe International Space Station orbits Earth every 90 minutesTravelling at 28,000 kilometres per hour astronauts see sixteen sunsets every dayThe station recycles almost all of its waterUrine, sweat and cabin humidity are distilled back into drinking waterA rowing eight carries a coxswainThe cox steers, calls the rhythm and is the only person facing forwardGeostationary orbit sits 35,786 kilometres upAt that height one lap takes exactly a day, so the satellite hangs stillOrbiting low means moving fastAt 400 kilometres altitude a satellite needs nearly 8 kilometres a second
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Tags: iss, orbits, crew
The space station circles Earth every 90 minutes: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- It travels at about 7.7 kilometres a second at 400 kilometres altitude. The figure is taken from NASA Station, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.