A home away from home. 🏠 After 13 years of assembly, the primary construction of the International Space Station was completed in 2011—turning science fiction into reality. Aboard the orbiting laboratory, which maintains an average altitude of 250 miles (402 km) above Earth, scientific experiments that benefit life on Earth are conducted daily. With the volume of a five-bedroom house or two Boeing 747 jetliners, the iss is able to support a crew of six people, plus visitors. On Earth, the station would weigh almost a million pounds. Measured from the edges of its solar arrays, the station covers the area of a football field including the end zones. Starting when the station's first crew arrived on Nov. 2, 2000, a human has lived in space every day since. The space station has made it possible for humanity to have an ongoing presence in space—and to expand our preparations for future human exploration of the solar system. The lessons learned from the ISS are helping to pave the wa...