The ISS-Historical Events As They Unfold

ISS in real time ISS in Real Time chronicles historic events aboard the space station as they unfolded, including the world's first all-woman spacewalk, performed by astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir in 2019. Image credit: ISS in Real Time. Above us, always: Chronicling humanity’s home in space, in real time by Emily Carney Monday, November 3, 2025 The International Space Station (ISS) program seems to run so silently and efficiently that not many people, save for space fans, remember that it has been functioning in orbit since 2000 (or really 1998, the year the first US and Russian segments were joined). By the numbers, the ISS program is staggering: as of July 2025, 290 people from 27 nations have visited or lived aboard the space station, conducting thousands of experiments. During its time in orbit, the ISS has witnessed the end of the 30-year Space Shuttle program and the dawn of the Commercial Crew Program. In short, the ISS has encompassed a massive block of space history. Ben Feist and David Charney, two of the thinkers behind Apollo in Real Time, have expanded the concept behind that project to the new ISS in Real Time. But the more human moments aboard the world’s premier scientific platform in space have tended to capture the public’s eye, such as 2019’s first all-woman spacewalk carried out by astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, and the thrill to follow many astronauts’ journeys in near real-time as they chronicle their missions on social media, something that did not yet exist when the ISS was first “opened for business” in 2000. But social media hasn’t quite been able to depict the station’s daily operations in “real time.” Enter Ben Feist and David Charney, two of the thinkers behind Apollo in Real Time, one of the most exciting resources made for space enthusiasts and historians alike in the last decade. The two have expanded the concept behind that project to the new ISS in Real Time, which aims to capture the station’s history as it happened. I took some time to discuss ISS in Real Time with Feist and Charney, asking them about the workload behind such a large endeavor and how the project will help shape the legacy of the ISS as it approaches nearly 30 years in space and with the end of the program now in sight. ISS in real time NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (left) and Christina Koch are inside the Quest airlock preparing the U.S. spacesuits and tools they will use on their first spacewalk together. (credit: NASA) Real-time storytelling from low Earth orbit Emily Carney: You’re well known for your Apollo in Real Time projects. However, the ISS in Real Time is a much larger endeavor. What were some of the biggest challenges, maybe even technical challenges, of assembling this project of such an enormous scale? How long did it take? Ben Feist: Apollo in Real Time was a bit of a labor of love in that I was touching the data itself. All of that analog material needed to be extensively cleaned up so it could behave like healthy digital data that could be put into a digital medium like apolloinrealtime.org. I knew that if I was going to try to make a real-time experience for ISS, I would have to have a rule: no manual intervention. If I were to start touching the ISS data manually, a photo caption here, a transcript correction there, I would be lost because there’s just so much of it. ISS data has the advantage of having started out as digital data, so making ISS in Real Time became an exercise in building transformative “pipelines” that take the historical data wherever I might find it across the internet, and transform it into a format I can use to serve an online multimedia presentation of it. This means that even if all of the data was deleted from ISS in Real Time, I could re-run these pipelines and reconstitute all of the mission data for it. This took about a year to work out and about five months of pipeline processing time (it’s computationally expensive, especially the transcript generation). The other huge technical challenge was building the interactive experience itself. We had to solve problems like, how can you make a navigational visualization that shows 25 years of anything and actually works, also on mobile. This wasn’t easy to get right, but luckily my collaborator, David Charney is a world-class UX [user experience] designer, and I dare say we cracked it. David Charney: To add a little more, I would say one of the design challenges that we had with ISS in Real Time is how to make the site feel consistent even though the available content on a given day varies so much. One day might have an article and the ISS location on the Earth, another day might have video, space to ground audio, a thousand photos, etc., and we didn’t want it to be jarring going from a day without a lot of content to a day with a lot. With a lot of the materials Ben included, I think even a day that doesn’t have a lot of material, can still be interesting. Carney: In 25 years, we’ve seen the ISS go from two smaller conjoined pieces to the sprawling complex we see now in many photos shared by US and international crews. How does ISS in Real Time address the changing nature of the space station over time? If we could determine that something was authentic mission material, and we could determine where it occurred in time, and it was public, it was included. Feist: The website itself doesn’t address the ISS’s changing nature itself, but the historical material being played back every day sure does. You can watch the ISS being constructed as it happened and watch as each iconic photo is taken throughout assembly. It would be great if we could have a 3D representation of the ISS to show how it changed over time, but we ran out of time before our “deadline” to flesh this out. We really wanted this to be available to everyone in time for the 25th anniversary of continuous human presence onboard (November 2, 2025). Charney: Yes, perhaps in the future we will show the “current state” of the ISS. Currently, there are still many images from approaching spacecraft and EVA video and imagery that show a handful of the different configurations over the years. Carney: The ISS years have also seen a wide variety of spacecraft visit the space station. How does the project explain all these developments throughout the decades? Feist: Every flight to and from the ISS is logged as part of the website’s timeline of events. You can read about each flight of course, but there are some more interesting interactions available, like moving your cursor across our 25-year-long timeline and watching flights come and go, and the roster of crew onboard change with every small movement of your mouse. Or, watch as a spacecraft docks and notice the roster of people onboard change at that very moment. It’s in these kinds of moments that I hope the website can help people to feel the immense scale of what the ISS program has achieved. ISS in real time This view of the International Space Station (ISS) was captured with a 35mm handheld camera through the Space Shuttle Atlantis' crew optical alignment system (COAS) during undocking operations. The undocking took place at 10:46 p.m. (CDT) on September 17, 2000. (credit: NASA) Carney: Given the sheer scale of the ISS program, how did you decide what content to include and what to leave out? Feist: Basically, we didn’t leave anything out. If we could determine that something was authentic mission material, and we could determine where it occurred in time, and it was public, it was included. I’m in the process of coming up with more elaborate ways to determine when things occurred, which will allow for the inclusion of even more material. For example, now that we have transcripts of communications for over 5,000 days onboard, if we find a video somewhere with no timing metadata, but we can clearly see that it took place onboard, we can match what people are saying in the video with the comm transcripts and reverse engineer when that video happened. It’s tricks like this that really show the value of disparate, contextual data being pulled together to make something that wasn’t there before. It’s also a lesson in the value of storing good metadata with mission material. You never know how someone might want to use that material later. Carney: How does the project capture the human experience aboard the station, like the quieter, more everyday moments of life in orbit? Feist: I think the most human moments are captured in some of the more casual communication chatter and fun crew photos that were taken onboard. The ISS program isn’t like Apollo in that recordings of every waking moment are available (either onboard or in mission control). On the ISS, people actually live there for long periods, so it’s understandable that every moment isn’t available. People need their privacy. Carney: Many non-space enthusiasts aren’t aware that the ISS program is still evolving. How will ISS in Real Time continue to provide updates? The previous Apollo projects had already “happened,” but the ISS is still orbiting the Earth. This project rejects the “summary” approach. Instead, it gives you the real events that occurred firsthand and does its best to get out of the way. Feist: That’s a great question. NASA continues to release mission data in a regular cadence, and because of our pipeline data processing approach, we will be able to continue to update ISS in Real Time as new data becomes available. It’s like backfilling the mission with additional data. As data becomes available, the website just gets better. If you visit today’s date, it will show you where the ISS currently is over the Earth, but it probably won’t have today’s data yet. It might have yesterday’s, though if you time your visit just after a data update. Carney: What do you think historians, perhaps decades from now, long after the ISS has deorbited, can learn from your project? What do you think the ISS’ legacy will be? Feist: Wow, you know how to ask the tough questions. I hope that this project can contribute to the human experience aspect of the mission. This project rejects the “summary” approach. Instead, it gives you the real events that occurred firsthand and does its best to get out of the way. No narrative. Apollo in Real Time lets you get to know the crew in a personal way and share in their excitement. ISS in Real Time endeavors to do the same. To assist with public discussion of events onboard, we have created an old-school message forum where people can share the things they discover. Anything. The website allows you to link to any second over the past 25 years. For example, the first all-female spacewalk or just some amazing pictures of the moonrise above the Earth. I hope historians can assemble there and we all learn new things about the past 25 years in orbit. Charney: Yeah, that is a great question. The more data we can add, the more day-to-day activity and moments will appear throughout the 25-plus years. I think people will learn a lot more about the science that occurred, learn about the crew and how they worked together, and with so many Earth photos and observations, a lot more about our home planet, too. ISS in Real Time can be experienced by visiting https://issinrealtime.org/. If you’d like to see an overview of ISS in Real Time, check out this YouTube video courtesy of Ben Feist. Many thanks to Feist and David Charney for discussing the project with me. Emily Carney is a space historian and lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida. She is the author of Star Bound: A Beginner’s Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard’s Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between along with Bruce McCandless III.

Mars Is The U.S.'s Next Strategic Imperative

Mars base Mars exploration provides a focus for an American strategy to remain competitive with geopolitical rivals. (credit: SpaceX) Why Mars is America’s next strategic imperative by Alexander William Salter Monday, November 3, 2025 Space is the defining strategic frontier of the 21st century. America’s space leadership depends on harnessing the private sector to create wealth and focusing the public sector on limited yet critical security and scientific objectives. While achieving supremacy in cislunar space (the region between the Earth and Moon, including the Moon’s surface) must be our immediate aim, it lacks the strategic coherence to sustain American leadership across decades. We need long-term goals to define success and clarify tradeoffs. A human mission to Mars can do both. America’s commercial space revolution offers a compelling model for space exploration that our competitors cannot match. China and Russia, our near-peer competitors in space, pose serious challenges. Beijing openly pursues dominance in the Earth-Moon system while accelerating toward Mars, with an ambitious Mars sample return mission scheduled for 2028. Russia maintains formidable military capabilities in space, alongside proven Mars science achievements. If our authoritarian rivals prevail, the world’s free nations may find their ability to access and use space significantly curtailed. This is why the United States needs a unifying long-term vision that focuses and directs near-term commercial, military, and scientific objectives. We must also research and develop technologies for sustained living in space. A smart Mars strategy provides the needed framework, creating the technological roadmap and institutional durability to win the cislunar competition and position America for permanent space premiership. America’s commercial space revolution offers a compelling model for space exploration that our competitors cannot match. Most obviously, market forces have been essential for reducing launch costs. SpaceX has already demonstrated that private initiative can outpace government bureaucracies, slashing launch costs from $18,000 per kilogram during the Space Shuttle era to roughly $2,700 for today’s reusable Falcon 9. A healthy ecosystem of suppliers, including Blue Origin, proves this success isn’t limited to one company. Cheaper launches mean increased launch cadence, which is necessary to keep space habitats provisioned. This is a prerequisite for conducting the research and tests for a journey to Mars. China’s approach offers an instructive contrast. While Beijing tolerates private sector participation, it ultimately remains under state control. This creates strategic coherence but sacrifices the agility and inventiveness that drive transformative breakthroughs. Chinese private space companies operate as tools of the state. Precisely because the Chinese Communist Party subordinates the information-generating and incentive-aligning features of markets, they will never enjoy the full benefits of space commerce. Preparing for Mars missions will yield new technologies with dual-use applications. On-orbit refueling, advanced life support systems, radiation shielding, nuclear propulsion, and autonomous manufacturing capabilities developed for Mars will flow back into energy production, medical devices, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing here on Earth. It will also bolster military preparedness through advancements in basic and applied sciences. All this redounds to national security by increasing the resilience of our space assets. These developments promise substantial job creation across skill and education levels. While Mars missions certainly demand high-tech expertise and advanced degrees, they also require skilled technicians, machinists, and assembly specialists. Going to Mars will help revitalize America’s industrial base while broadly distributing economic prosperity. Mars represents the next great test of American resolve. Bold endeavors define our national character. While a single Mars mission could take 30 months or longer, a Mars program will likely span decades, requiring support from multiple Congresses and presidential administrations. Avoiding the start-stop cycles that plagued space programs, from Apollo to Constellation, requires building institutional and political durability at the outset. The foundation must be bipartisan, framing Mars leadership as a matter of national security and economic competitiveness. Private-sector anchoring creates a robust foundation. Expanding milestone-based public-private partnerships ties American industry to Mars logistics and operations. When companies and workers nationwide have a stake in space exploration, political support becomes geographically broad and resilient across electoral cycles. Ultimately, mission success offers the best defense against annual appropriations turbulence. The federal government’s role must remain limited and focused. Agencies should help finance foundational research and development through mission-oriented programs. Public-private agreements should be structured to maximize flexibility. Renting services rather than purchasing equipment ought to be the government’s default approach. We must also maintain a predictable regulatory environment that protects property rights and resists bureaucratic mission creep. The government’s comparative advantage is setting long-term national objectives and coordinating industry on best practices. While public values channeled through the political process set our destination, private initiative and the profit motive serve as our most powerful engine. Integration with existing programs maximizes efficiency. The groundwork for future Mars missions should complement, not duplicate, the Space Force’s cislunar operations and NASA’s Artemis lunar architecture. On the international stage, the US should leverage alliance relationships while ensuring American leadership in setting exploration norms through frameworks like the Artemis Accords. Building on our success with the Artemis Accords, we should actively pursue partnerships with the European Union and Japan. We should also deepen space ties with India, which may induce them to align with the free world instead of Russia and China. History has shown our allies will help shoulder the burdens of freedom if America has the courage to lead. Strategic signaling to allies and competitors augments the framework. A stable, legislated Mars roadmap reassures international partners while deterring rivals, ensuring program continuity. Mars represents the next great test of American resolve. Bold endeavors define our national character. Amidst social and political fragmentation, undertaking something even greater than a moonshot is an opportunity for national solidarity. The strategic necessity is clear, the economic logic is compelling, and the technological pathway is feasible. What Mars demands now is the political will to harness America’s asymmetric advantages for humanity’s greatest adventure. Getting to Mars requires the fortitude to sustain multi-year missions alongside the business discipline to achieve them cost-effectively. America’s commercial space sector provides the capability and incentives to make Mars exploration both symbolically and economically rewarding. Situating our cislunar activities within a Mars plan makes the payoffs even clearer. The Moon and Mars are complements, not substitutes. The choice before us is clear: lead a free, rules-based expansion of human civilization beyond Earth, or cede the final frontier to authoritarianism. If we fail, we relegate ourselves to the status of a nation in decline. We cannot accept red flags on the Red Planet. A version of this article was first published by The American Mind and is republished with permission. Alexander William Salter is the Georgie G. Snyder Associate Professor of Economic in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University and a researcher at TTU’s Free Market Institute. He also holds fellowships with the Independent Institute and the American Institute for Economic Research.

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Space X Details Expedited Lunar Mission Timeline

SpaceX Details Expedited Lunar Mission Timeline As Elon Musk Says Starship Can Carry '100 People' Amid Sean Duffy's Search For Backup Options By Badar Shaikh, 2 days ago Elon Musk's commercial space flight company, SpaceX,shared an expedited timeline of its Lunar mission goals amid uncertainty over NASA's Artemis contracts. SpaceX's Expedited Lunar Timeline The company shared updates on its official website on Thursday, sharing that the development of the mission was moving at "a historically rapid pace" before touting the Starship's ability to be refilled with propellant in orbit as well as its large size, which made it an ideal candidate for lunar exploration. The company also said that Starship has a 600 cubic meter pressurized habitable volume, "roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station." SpaceX said that it is developing Starship in parallel paths, a core concept configuration for Mars exploration as well as a lunar lander, tailored to NASA's requirements for the Artemis mission. "SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs," the company said. SpaceX added in its statement that the company would bring the "United States back to the Moon before any other nation and it will enable sustainable lunar operations," using the Starship rocket. Talking about the Artemis mission specifically, the company said that it has completed over 49 milestones tied to the lander's development, including "Micrometeoroid and orbital debris testing of shielding, insulation, and window panels" and "Lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control system demonstrations." The company touts ship-to-ship transfer of propellant as the next step in the development of the Starship, as well as longer-duration flights, both of which are scheduled for 2026. "SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible, approaching the mission with the same alacrity and commitment that returned human spaceflight capability to America under NASA's Commercial Crew program," the company said, adding that Starship remains a key enabler of permanent human presence on the Moon. Elon Musk, in a post on social media platform X on Thursday, said that Starship was designed to carry "over 100 people" into space. Sean Duffy Vs Elon Musk Over Artemis Contracts The updates from SpaceX come as Sean Duffy, the current acting administrator of NASA, recently shared that SpaceX was doing incredible things, but it was "behind schedule" in the development of the Artemis mission, scheduled for 2027. Duffy also hinted at the possibility of other companies placing bids for the Artemis mission. Duffy's comments brought some choice words out of Musk, calling the administrator a person with "2 digit IQ" as well as accusing Duffy of trying to "kill NASA" in a series of social media posts. Jared Isaacman's NASA Bid, Blue Origin Touts New Glenn Meanwhile, Musk's close ally and billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is the CEO of Shift4 Payments Inc. (NASDAQ:FOUR), is reportedly back in contention for the NASA administrator job after being snubbed by President Donald Trump over Isaacman's previous political associations. Elsewhere, Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin successfully conducted the New Glenn rocket's hotfire at LC-36. The company had previously showcased a new booster stage for the vehicle in the run-up to the NS-36 launch.

SpaceX unleashes Lunar Starship blitz after saying little about the Moon...