Tour the International Space Station: 25 Years of Humans in Space

Tour the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Kjell Lindgren as they celebrate 25 years of continuous human presence in orbit. Explore what it’s like to live in microgravity, float through the station, and conduct science that benefits people on Earth and enables NASA’s missions to the Moon and Mars. Celebrate with us at https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/iss25/. Join NASA as we go forward to the Moon and on to Mars -- discover the latest on Earth, the Solar System and beyond with a weekly update in your inbox. Subscribe at: https://www.nasa.gov/subscribe

What is said in the film

Hi. I'm Colonel Nicole Mann. And I'm Dr. Kjell Lindgren. We're here today to show you a tour of our home in space.

The International Space Station. This was my home for 157 days. And Kjell, you spent even more time on station. Yeah, 311 days total. And we got to spend about a week of that time together.

Living on the space station is really one of the most incredible experiences. So we're excited to show you our place in space. Welcome to station. The International Space Station is a microgravity laboratory 250 miles above the Earth and flying at 17,500mph. That means we orbit the planet once every 90 minutes.

The first time you see station, it's just breathtaking. You can't believe that you've actually left planet Earth and you're floating in space. Then suddenly, the solar arrays come into view and you can see just how massive it is. We're starting in the European Space Agency's Columbus module. And you can see I'm actually on the ham radio communicating with students on the ground.

This module houses a lot of our experiments. And I think our favorite one, casting that pink glow from the right, is the Veggie enclosure where we get to grow vegetables. Yeah, I'm in fact, we grew dwarf tomatoes while we were on board. Well, you got to harvest tomatoes. We actually planted those.

Okay, he started it, but we cultivated those little guys, okay? It was a joint. There's a joint effort. Now we're making our way across the front of node two and into, the Japanese experiment module called Kibo. Kibo is a great module where we execute a ton of science.

We have a freezer in there called MELFI. A lot of the experiments with flames and different types. Oh, hey, there goes Samantha floating by. That floating never gets old. We're looking at the different types of flames, different types of metal components in there.

And now we're coming up here on the airlock. And so we're not only doing science inside the space station, but also outside and that airlock gives us the opportunity to actually, put equipment and experiments on the outside of the space station as well. And so we just hooked a u turn here. Now we're, floating starboard to the right side of the space station. And we're going to, as we go into node two here on the left is actually Nicole, where your Crew-5 dragon.

Yeah, we were docked at node two forward. That's right. And our Crew-4 spacecraft, freedom is actually overhead. But we're going to take a hard right here and now look aft towards the back of the space station. We're currently in node two.

And, you can see, I think that's Frank there on the cycle. But before we go into the lab, we're going to pitch down and look inside one of our crew quarters. And one of my crewmates, Jessica Watkins, is is pretending to sleep in there. So our crew quarters in node two, we have overhead deck, port and starboard. And so the astronauts will sleep in those compartments that are about the size of a telephone booth, but pretty comfortable.

Yep, yep. Now we're floating into the US lab. This is the primary segment for the US experiment. There is Frank waving. He's on our cycle called CEVIS and we spend about two hours a day working out, on the bike, on the treadmill, and also on our exercise resistance device.

That's right. And the lab is kind of the heart and brains of the US segment of the space station. A lot of our avionics, a lot of our experiments, our housed in there. Now, we're passing aft lab into node one. And so this is the oldest U.

S. node on the International Space Station. It houses our galley and you can see our dinner table there. And we're taking a right into node three here. All right.

And there you can see Bob Hines running on the treadmill. He's literally running on kind of the side of the wall. And there I am kind of behind him getting out of the way. It looks like it's crowded here. But really because you have three dimensions to use, you can just kind of float around each other, but you still need to get out of the way.

Yeah, and I did a poor job of flying here. I got I got bumped I think you bumped him a little bit. Yeah. Here's Koichi, he's on the ARED, the advanced resistive exercise device. This gives us up to 600 pounds of resistance to maintain bone health, muscle strength, and really keeps us, fit for a return to the Earth.

All right, here's one of our favorite modules. And you can see Samantha here in the Cupola. The Cupola is a series of windows that look down at our beautiful planet Earth. And photography is used for Earth observation. Sometimes we're taking pictures of weather or, you know, volcano eruptions.

It's used for a lot of different, data gathering of our planet. In addition to the science that we do there it's also like one of our favorite places to just hang out. We'll often see something, aurora or some just beautiful sights out that window and oftentimes just call the rest of the crew there to, to share in that experience. Absolutely. Definitely changes your perspective on the planet.

Now we're headed here into the airlock. You can see our spacesuits, which we use for a spacewalk or EVA, extravehicular activity. And there's Josh Cassada. He is working on some of our spacesuits, getting them ready for the next spacewalk. Behind Josh's feet is actually the crew lock.

When we're not doing EVAs that is full of stuff. But when we're getting ready to do a spacewalk that is completely empty, and that's the section that goes down the vacuum. All right, here's lunchtime. You can see Bob and Frank, and they're, they're playing with their food. It is definitely, the best place to play with, food when you're in space.

You can see there I am overhead or on the ceiling, as we call it. And then Jessica Watkins at the far end. A lot of times we enjoy our meals together, which are a great time for the crew just to to bond, but also to talk about the day, any lessons learned that we have and, and debrief anything that happened. That's right. Now we're making our way into PMA one.

And so this is the connection between the US segment of the space station and the Russian section. And so you can see how it kind of scopes down from our square hatches to these round hatches. And all of these bags surrounding here essentially serve as our pantry. So all of our daily supplies are contained in those bags, making a quick access to get new washcloths or, or those sorts of things. You know, this is truly an international space station.

And so we have five different space agencies that participate Japan, Europe, Canada, the US and Russia. And so this last segment here was actually the first component of the space station. It orbited Earth alone for 16 days before Space Shuttle Endeavor arrived and installed the Unity module. It's mainly used for storage now. And you can see that half of the passageway, that whole, deck, half of the passageway is just chock full of stuff.

And if we were on the Earth, this would be almost impossible to navigate. Of course, in space, we're able to float and just float over the top of all of these pieces of equipment. Much of this is, parts of our waste, system, essentially our toilet. And you can see those panels on either side of the view there. There's also panels overhead and down below.

So sometimes if you need to get to one of those panels that's underneath. Yes, you have to move all that cargo out of the way and not let it float away and lose anything. That's a lot of work. Now we're making our continuing our our, way aft and in the very far, in the background, you can see into the service module. We're going to make our way in there.

We're going to pass through this node. And, and we'll look in those nodes here, and a little bit. You can see Anna Kikina there in the background. She was a crew member with me on Crew-5, and she was actually the first cosmonaut to launch on a Dragon spacecraft. And she's running on their treadmill.

And we're making our way into the Service Module. So this is really the heart and brains of the Russian segment of the space station. It's design and construction is really rooted in the very earliest, Russian space stations. And it's pretty self-contained. So you can see Ana is here exercising, they have their, command panel for emergencies, their crew quarters, their toilet.

A lot of their science is all housed in this, in this module, You can also see that there's quite a few windows on the deck portion of this segment and a lot of cameras. This is one of the greatest places for Earth observation besides the Cupola, of course. And we can use a lot of those photographs there for Earth observation. And Anna is exercising right next to the the Russian segment’s table. And so, our crews would generally gather on weekends to eat together as, as, Nicole described, an opportunity for us to gather together in the Russian segment on Friday nights.

And then we would gather in the U. S. segment in the galley on Saturday nights and, an opportunity to, not only just eat, but, share, to commiserate, to celebrate. I think, the same things that we do with food here on the ground. Absolutely.

And there's typically seven, people on board, three cosmonauts and four astronauts. And so it seems, again, like a small space, but there's really plenty of room for us to gather and enjoy. So now we're pitching downward, down towards the earth or towards the deck or natur, to look into Nauka or the science module, the new science module on the space station. And, and so this kind of demonstrates how as you move from module to module, it can kind of be a little disconcerting, as you are figuring out which way is kind of oriented up in a particular module. And there you can see a cosmonaut, Dmitri, he's working in the glove box on some science that he's executing there in, MLM.

And this module gave the Russians more room, more capability to do science. There's another crew quarters down there, and additional toilet. Now, returning back around to work and, to look into one of the docking compartments. And there's Sergey. He's working on the, spacesuits on the Russian segment for their EVA.

So you can see it's similar to our airlock where there's the, spacesuits. He's cleaning out the spacesuit, preparing for their next spacewalk. And again, as we pitched up. Now we're looking upward. It's hard to keep track.

It really is. And it it's like that when you're floating around, too, you'll come out of a module and you have to take a moment to figure out, okay, which, which direction do I need to go in. And so here we're, we're pulling back. And now we're going to be facing forward again, and making our way back through the FGB, through that functional cargo block and all of this area of stowage. Yeah you're right.

Sometimes you enter a module and you're this just doesn't look quite right until you, you know, orient yourself in the direction you're used to. Like now we are boom. And your brain just kind of cages. And so we're floating back through the FGB, which would be kind of in a normal upright approach. But really when you're up there, it doesn't matter.

There's no upside down or top or bottom or anything. That's right. You can kind of make any direction your up. Although, I think we take orientation cues from one, how the models were situated on the ground when we were training. A lot of the labels and interfaces have orientation.

And then I think, one other powerful orienting factor is the light. You kind of look for the lights to be on the on the ceiling, on the overhead. Yeah. It's funny how our brains just kind of lock on to that little bit. So now we're coming back through PMA one, and you can see all of our storage bags that are going to be kind of surrounding us.

And really we call this our pantry. So it's got all of your supply. So if you run out of, toilet paper or tissues or garbage bags or anything like that, that they're located kind of in this module here, the segment and now we're floating back through node one. And so you can see our dinner table here in node one, our galley. And if you look you can just see the odd orientation of some of the utensils.

And you can see our hot sauce and spoons are just basically either velcroed or taped, touching some tape or there's also some food bags there, that folks are kind of in between meals or snacks. And you do have to be careful. If you bump one of those, it will float away. And sometimes it takes a while to find it. But it's amazing.

You just need a little bit of tape that you can stick your spoon to. Oh, there I am in the airlock. I'm showing off. You know what it's like to to float around and work there on the ceiling. And now we're going to, turn back.

Looking forward in the space station, you can see a couple of our cameras just velcroed to the wall there. Very easy to stow stuff. And as we make our way back to the lab, you can see, Jessica is on our our simulator, our robotic arm simulator. And so we do robotic arm operations either during spacewalks or during cargo vehicle captures. And we need to practice.

We need to keep our skills up. And so, Jessica's demonstrating how that works. You can see Bob here. He's grabbing me a camera and he's gonna look down through another window that we have, which is called WORF, that's used for a lot of scientific research and investigation of our planet. And it's really amazing when you look down through this window because we're traveling so fast, 17,500 miles an hour to really get a zoomed in photograph of the Earth, you actually have to move and track the planet.

Otherwise it's going to be blurry. That's right. And you can see how we have to hold ourselves down. So, Bob has tucked his legs underneath the bungees there and, and, and so we have to be very intentional about the stuff that we're handling. Either we have to stick it to the wall on Velcro, tuck things under, under bungees or else it's going to float away.

And as we as we go through here, I think you probably notice just how maybe messy the space station looks. It is a functional, constantly changing environment, and it's got wires and cables and, and, and it looks it looks kind of messy. It does, but it's controlled chaos. It really is. I mean, there's and there's folks on the ground that really keep track of where all of our, our bags are and all the equipment is so that we don't lose anything.

And, you know, I mentioned that we have normally seven people on board, but we've seen a lot of people here during this tour. We in fact have 11 people on board at this time because we're doing a crew handover. So Crew-4 and Crew-5, both of those dragons are attached making the 11 people. That's right. And so Crew-4, my crew has been up there for almost six months at this point.

You all docked maybe 4 or 5 days. Just a couple days ago, we were still figuring out how to float around. And this is our time where we're just kind of handing over our lessons learned and the state of the space station to you all as you prepare to take over. And now we're making our way through PMA three, and this is where the Crew-4 dragon Freedom is docked. And, and during the last part, during this handover time, I actually got to stay in Freedom as my crew quarters, which was absolutely amazing.

I think the best part about being a dragon is the windows, right? I mean, it it is, talk about the penthouse, penthouse suite when you're sleeping there and you wake up, you can take that shade down and you just have a beautiful, beautiful view of our planet. Yeah. And I think that that is, we all agree that this is one of, the most amazing, opportunities that we have when we're living in space. Is that opportunity to look out the window at any given moment and to look back at, look back from our temporary home on the space station to humanity's home.

The absolutely beautiful, planet Earth.

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