International Space Station is catalogued in this registry as a spacestation, held in the frame of Earth, from International Space Station (curated).
Registry id ISS_COMPLEX ·
source layer iss ·
provenance PROCESSED — derived deterministically from source catalogues (unit, frame and epoch conversions, cross-source reconciliation) — no value invented
Exists from 1998-11-20 00:00:00 UTC (JD 2451137.5) — no end date is recorded.
Open International Space Station in the live scene → The scene composes a position for any date and is where a figure becomes a picture. It downloads the whole catalogue first: measured against the built product, an object outside the core resolves after about 16 s over a local network and about 147 s over a 4 Mbit link, having transferred roughly 70 MB. If you cannot wait that long, this page is the answer.
| Quantity | Value | Uncertainty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radius | 55 m | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
Each row carries its own uncertainty and its own source. Where a row says no uncertainty is published, that is what the catalogue says — it is not a claim that the value is exact.
These are the sourced elements. This page does not print a position: a position is a function of time, and a single one dated to the bake would be stale the moment it was read. The registry composes a position for any date, past or future, from these elements — open the scene below and set the clock.
| Quantity | Value | Uncertainty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semi-major axis | 6791000 m (6791 km) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Eccentricity | 0.0005 | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Inclination | 1.30371 rad (74.6971°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Longitude of ascending node | 2.976565 rad (170.5446°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Argument of periapsis | 0 rad (0°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Mean anomaly at epoch | 4.625458 rad (265.0192°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
Elements are expressed in the frame of
EARTH at epoch
2000-01-01 12:00:00 UTC (JD 2451545). Gravitational parameter of the primary:
3.9860044×10^14 m³/s². Semi-major axis in astronomical units uses the
IAU 2012 definition (1 au = 1.495978707×10^11 m exactly).
| Kind | spacestation |
|---|---|
| Origin | artificial (made by humans) |
| 3-D model | carries a published mesh |
The assembled ISS, as one persistent object on its operational orbit (~420 km, 51.64°). Modules are catalogued individually in GCAT; this is the navigable complex. Assembly, dockings and EVAs are time-located events here. [public record — NASA ISS assembly / spacewalking history / GCAT]
Reproduced as the source wrote it. Author-year citations link to their DOI where one is registered.
These are absences in the catalogues aggregated here, not measurements of zero, and not statements that the quantity is unknown to science:
| Database | International Space Station (curated) |
|---|---|
| Authority | NASA ISS assembly elements; NASA spacewalking history; NASA EVA chronology; GCAT |
| Licence | Public record |
| How it entered | Curated data-as-code (src/ingest/catalogs/iss.ts) |
| Coverage | The persistent ISS complex on its operational orbit + a timeline of assembly milestones, dockings/undockings and EVA milestones as time-located events |
This database remains the property of its owners and is reused under its own licence. If you quote a value from this page, name that database alongside SolarSystemRegistry.org.