What is the ISS?
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest structure humans have ever put in space: 109 metres end to end — about a football field — orbiting ~400 km above Earth at 28,000 km/h. It circles the planet every 92 minutes and has been continuously inhabited since 2 November 2000.
A laboratory like no other
The ISS is a microgravity laboratory shared by five space agencies (NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA, CSA). Research ranges from protein crystals for drug design to how flames and fluids behave without gravity — over 3,000 experiments to date, from more than 100 countries.
Why you can see it with your naked eye
Its acre of solar panels makes the ISS the brightest artificial object in the sky — often outshining Venus. It looks like a brilliant, fast, non-blinking star crossing the sky in about five minutes, always travelling roughly west to east. The catch: it's only visible when it is sunlit while your sky is dark — evening and pre-dawn passes.
Check tonight's pass times for 150 cities or turn on a free pass alert and Cosmik will ping you ~10 minutes before it crosses your sky.