International Space Station completes 100,000th orbit of Earth

The International Space Station, the space laboratory that showcases cooperation between Russia and the United States, on Monday, May 16, orbited Earth for the 100,000th time, Russian mission control said. Traveling at an altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers) and a speed of about 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour, the space station circles the Earth once every 90 minutes. Its “anniversary orbit” lasted from 7:35 am to 9:10 am Moscow time (0435 to 0610 GMT), mission control said. The ISS has now travelled 2.6 billion miles “or about the distance of 10 round trips to Mars,” NASA said on the station’s official Twitter feed. The first crew to inhabit the station – American astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko – arrived in 2000, since when it has been continually occupied.

Read: ISS completes 100,000th orbit of Earth – mission control