The International Space Station (ISS) has been orbiting the Earth for a quarter of a century.
But just this week, all eight docking ports were filled simultaneously.
The spacecraft currently docked at the orbital outpost are: two SpaceX Dragons, a Cygnus XL, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) HTV-X1, two Russian Soyuz crew spacecraft and two Russian Progress cargo ships.
The record-breaking moment occurred Monday with the reinstallation of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft into the Earthside port of the station’s Unity module.
The Cygnus XL arrived at the station in September but was briefly undocked last month to make way for the arrival of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a NASA astronaut and two Roscosmos cosmonauts.
“The Cygnus XL movement was coordinated between NASA, Northrop Grumman and Roscosmos to provide clearance to the manned Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft arriving on November 27,” NASA said in a post on its website.
Cygnus will remain on the ISS until at least March 2026, when it will depart and burn in Earth’s atmosphere, disposing of up to 11,000 pounds of trash and unnecessary cargo.
The first-ever occupancy of all of the station’s ports marks the facility’s evolution into a busy international hub for low Earth orbit operations and signals strong demand for future orbital infrastructure.
This is particularly encouraging as the ISS is expected to cease operations around 2030 due to high maintenance costs.
A number of US companies are already working on commercial designs to replace the ISS, while Russia plans to deploy its own habitable satellite in the coming years. China already has a space station in low Earth orbit.
For more information about how astronauts live and work aboard the ISS, check out these insightful videos created by various visitors to the facility over the years.
