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 | 6798542 m (6798.542 km) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Eccentricity | 0.0006877 | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Inclination | 1.113238 rad (63.78384°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Longitude of ascending node | 2.218852 rad (127.1309°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Argument of periapsis | 3.523398 rad (201.8758°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
| Mean anomaly at epoch | 2.344115 rad (134.3079°) | no published uncertainty in this registry | International Space Station (curated) |
Elements are expressed in the frame of
EARTH at epoch
2026-10-05 11:57:27 UTC (JD 2461318.9982367). 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. Orbit: Celestrak GP element set for NORAD 25544 (ISS (ZARYA)), epoch 2026-10-05T11:57Z — a/e/i/Ω/ω/M₀ all from the set, drawn two-body from that epoch: exact there, drifting from it as the set ages, like every GP-joined object of the same snapshot. The record carries the Earth's J2 node and perigee rates (~5°/day of nodal regression at this altitude); the viewer does not apply them yet. [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; Celestrak GP (the station's own element set, NORAD 25544) |
| Licence | Public record · Celestrak: public US SSN data, attribution |
| How it entered | Curated data-as-code (src/ingest/catalogs/iss.ts); the orbit joined at bake time from the newest committed Celestrak snapshot |
| Coverage | The persistent ISS complex on its own measured orbit (a/e/i/Ω/ω/M₀ + epoch from Celestrak GP; a labelled placeholder when no set is handed in) + 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.