Space station

A space station is an artificial satellite in space that people can live at. All past and current space stations have been in low Earth orbit. Space stations can dock with other spacecraft. This allows transferring cargo and people. At present the International Space Station is the only space station in orbit. The first space station was Salyut 1. Prior stations were the seven Salyut stations, Skylab, Mir and the two Tiangong stations.^[1] The Chinese Space Station is planned for the future.^[2]

International Space Station

Space stations are used to learn about how being in space for a long time affects the human body. They also are a place for science experiments and research.^[3] Space stations have been designed for more than one crew. Each crew member may stay aboard the station for weeks or months, and then is replaced by others. Some have spent more than one year at a time on a space station. This includes Vladimir Titov, Musa Manarov, Sergei Avdeyev and Valeriy Polyakov aboard Mir.^[4]

List of successful stations

The below list is of stations that made it to orbit and had at least one crew visit them. There have also been a few stations that have failed or were for testing. Those are not included on this list.

Name	Country	Launched	Burned up in atmosphere	Days in orbit	Days with people on board	Crew and visitors (total)	Visiting crewed spacecraft	Visiting uncrewed spacecraft	Mass kg
Salyut 1	Soviet Union	19 April 1971	11 October 1971	175	23	3	2	-	18,500
Skylab	United States	14 May 1973	11 July 1979	2250	171	9	3	0	18,500
Salyut 3	Soviet Union	25 June 1974	24 January 1975	213	15	2	2	-	18,500
Salyut 4	Soviet Union	26 December 1974	3 February 1977	770	92	4	2	1	18,500
Salyut 5	Soviet Union	22 June 1976	8 August 1977	412	67	4	3	-	19,000
Salyut 6	Soviet Union	29 September 1977	29 July 1982	1764	683	33	18	15	19,824
Salyut 7	Soviet Union	19 April 1982	7 February 1991	3216	816	26	11	15	18,900
Mir	Soviet Union, Russia	19 February 1986	23 March 2001	5512	4594	125	39	68	129,700
International Space Station	United States, Russia, Members of the ESA, Canada, Japan	20 November 1998	Still in orbit	9900	9210	240[note 1]	103[note 2]	136[note 2]	925,335
Tiangong-1	China	29 September 2011	2 April 2018	2378	26	6	2	1	8,506
Tiangong-2	China	15 September 2016	19 July 2019	1038	26	2	1	1	8,506

Research and development of parts for space stations

Prototype of LIFE habitat inside the Space Station Processing Facility (2021)

In 2024, international media showed a film clip of a NASA test of putting too much pressure inside a LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat, a room designed for a future space station.^[5][6]

Notes

1. Subject to increase while station is in orbit.
2. As of 28 April 2021. Subject to increase while station is in orbit.