esa virtual tour international space station

New Virtual Tour Lets You Explore the International Space Station

Very few people get to fly to low Earth orbit, let alone live there. But now, the rest of us can enjoy a simulation of the experience, thanks to a new virtual tour of the International Space Station (ISS) created by the European Space Agency. 

Available in six languages — English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch — the narrated video takes the viewer on an end-to-end journey through the station, inside and out. Americans may particularly enjoy a close look at the Russian side of the space station, which is rarely featured in NASA photos. 

Space buffs will recognize some file footage, but the full edited movie provides the illusion of being weightless inside the ISS and flying closely outside it. A 3D version of the video is available on YouTube , and is best viewed, of course, through stereoscopic 3D glasses. 

A short segment showing cosmonauts eating a meal gives a real sense of what it looks and feels like to eat in space. The narrator notes that there are no showers on board the space station, and that sponge baths are the rule. 

Ultimately, the virtual tour provides a sense of the enormous scale of the station's real estate. Although the living quarters are limited — in fact, they're even more cramped than a submarine — the station itself is nearly large enough to get lost in. At nearly four times as large as the Russian space station Mir , it's the biggest thing humans have ever built in space. 

You can Follow Jesse Empsak  @Mad_Science_Guy .  Follow us  @Spacedotcom ,  Facebook  or  Google+ .  Originally published on  Space.com .

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Jesse Emspak is a freelance journalist who has contributed to several publications, including Space.com, Scientific American, New Scientist, Smithsonian.com and Undark. He focuses on physics and cool technologies but has been known to write about the odder stories of human health and science as it relates to culture. Jesse has a Master of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Rochester. Jesse spent years covering finance and cut his teeth at local newspapers, working local politics and police beats. Jesse likes to stay active and holds a fourth degree black belt in Karate, which just means he now knows how much he has to learn and the importance of good teaching.

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Take a self-guided virtual tour of the International Space Station

Clicking around the European Space Agency's recently expanded website feels like the next best thing to being an astronaut.

While we've seen lots of photos and videos of the inside of the International Space Station (ISS), seen what our planet looks like from aboard the orbiting outpost and even heard what it sounds like up there, your chance to actually guide yourself through the various modules that comprise the station has been limited. That changed in June, when the European Space Agency (ESA) put up a website that allowed you to pilot your mouse around the Columbus module , the ISS research pod deployed by the ESA in 2008.

Now, the ESA has expanded its virtual tour site to include five more modules. In fact, all of the modules are now online except for the Russian ones, which the ESA says will be released later this year, so you can now click around quite a bit of the Space Station.

The virtual tour was created from photos taken by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in June 2015, just before she left the space base, after spending 199 days aboard.

What life is like on the International Space Station (pictures)

As you pan around the different modules, you can zoom in to check out tiny details -- like the circuitry and writing on various pieces of equipment, or the bulldog clips and velcro used to stop things floating around -- which I personally find endlessly captivating.

You can also click on the "play" arrows to see video of Cristoforetti engagingly explaining parts of the station. Various text boxes also give you pop-up windows with even more information -- like a link to the ESA's "Where is the International Space Station?" web page .

The site works best in full-screen mode and truly gives you a taste of something only a minuscule fraction of humanity will ever experience in person. And all without the need to eat space lettuce or recycle your urine , which can only be a bonus.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Take an amazing virtual tour aboard the ISS

Ever wanted a tour of the International Space Station in all its gravity-defying glory? Well now you can, courtesy of an explorable panorama from the European Space Agency .

The interactive tool offers a snapshot into how the ISS looked in June 2015, shortly after it was remodelled to free up a docking port, with the 10-tonne Leonardo storage module moved to the Tranquility node.

All the pictures were taken by ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti , who spent 199 days onboard the craft -- taking up to 15 photographs inside each module. You can roam through each part of the Space Station, moving through the hatches, and zoom in on various pieces of equipment, from the onboard exercise bike to the oven.

You can also click on the various "play" icons to watch Cristoforetti herself explain more about an item or give a demonstration, and you can read in-depth web articles too.

Currently, the Russian modules are off limits -- a complete tour of the ISS won't be available until later this year -- but in the meantime, it offers a fascinating glimpse into what everyday life is like on the craft.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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Take A 360-Degree Tour Of The Space Station With These Stunning Interactive Panoramas

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a series of incredible interactive videos that enable people to take a panoramic tour of the International Space Station.

While the stunning videos can be viewed on a virtual reality headset, they can also be explored on YouTube , Flickr or Facebook on a computer (preferably on ‘full screen’) or by swiping around the screen on a smartphone.

ESA started releasing 360 tours of the different pods that make up the space station last year and has just added the Unity module.

Unity first launched into space in 1988 aboard space shuttle Endeavour and was joined by the Russian Zarya module two day later, forming the basis of the ISS.

Other available 360-degree tours available include ESA’s Columbus module , which is the portion of the ISS where European astronauts carry out experiments.

The photos were taken last year by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti who snapped up to 15 pictures inside each module of the space station.

The images were then digitally stitched together to form interactive panoramas.

Viewers can explore the modules and zoom in to see more detail or use the map or the arrow icons by the module hatches to move into another section of the ISS.

Image credit: ESA

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You Can Now Tour the International Space Station From the Comfort of Your Home

You can now travel to space without decades of hard work and training..

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Chances are the coronavirus outbreak has curtailed any ambitious summer vacation plans you may have had. But as far as Google is concerned, that doesn’t need to be the case. In fact, the internet giant wants to take you to space.

Google Arts & Culture now offers a full, 360-degree virtual tour of the International Space Station, and it’s accessible to anyone with internet access. Making use of the company’s Street View technology, the tour lets you explore every single nook and cranny of the 21-year-old space station without the decades of hard work and preparation that would normally require.

A look inside the International Space Station  Google Arts & Culture

While you won’t get to experience the feel of floating through the space station, Google’s digital exhibition feels like the next best thing. You can travel down any of ISS’s long and winding tunnels and look around all of its equipment-packed rooms. You can even check out the crew quarters and see some of the astronauts’ personal items.

In addition to the tour, Google has also whipped up a fun and educational ISS-themed informational program. Aimed specifically at younger virtual space tourists, the show attempts to illustrates what life on the station is like. It covers everything from what and how the visiting astronauts eat to the effect that zero-gravity takes on their bodies while they orbit the Earth.

Google Arts & Culture

If your virtual trip to the ISS has only managed to stoke your appetite for more space content, Google has you covered. The station tour is just one of several digital exhibitions Arts & Culture has on its Space Exploration page. Other exhibitions of interest include a closer look at the moon landing , a tribute to women who have gone to space , as well as scores of high-definition video content shot from space. Of course, if your virtual traveling interests are more earthbound, there’s still plenty of content for you to check out on Arts & Culture, too. The company also has countless virtual tours of tourist attractions, national parks and museums around the world.

Bryan Hood is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. Before joining the magazine, he worked for the New York Post, Artinfo and New York magazine, where he covered everything from celebrity gossip to…

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Take a Virtual Trip to the International Space Station

New VR simulation turns you into an orbiting astronaut

Erin Blakemore

Correspondent

What’s life like aboard the International Space Station? This is a question only a select few can answer. But thanks to a new virtual reality tour, more people than ever can step aboard the floating lab to virtually explore the station and its mind-boggling views, reports  Mashable ’s Adario Strange .

Created in collaboration with NASA and the Canadian and European space agencies, the new program is called Mission: ISS . And it’s probably the closest you’ll ever come to visiting the space station for yourself. The program uses Oculus Rift virtual reality and Oculus Touch motion control to create a realistic simulation of life aboard the station.

As Oculus writes on its blog , the movie was designed to recreate the ISS “in painstaking detail.” The free simulation was based on NASA models and developed with the input of astronauts and NASA’s Virtual Reality Laboratory , which uses virtual reality to train astronauts for their in-space tasks.

With the help of motion controls, users can try their hand at everything from spacewalks to docking spacecrafts—all in a simulated zero-gravity environment. (Strange warns that the simulated weightlessness is so realistic that might want to sit down before stepping into the virtual world.)

The simulation may be fun, but it is no video game, Strange writes. The program is intended give users a realistic idea of what it's like to live in space. Users can also learn about individual astronauts and the history of the ISS through a series of video clips. The team is also testing the program as an educational tool to teach U.S. high school students about the station.

Augmented reality is already being tested in space with the help of Microsoft’s HoloLens headset, which will one day be used to guide repairs and let on-ground techs see exactly what astronauts observe. But virtual reality—completely immersive simulations—has yet to make it into space. That’s about to change, according to the Oculus blog. An Oculus headset will be sent to space and used by astronaut Thomas Pesquet to test how gravity affects spatial awareness. 

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Erin Blakemore | | READ MORE

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist. Her work has appeared in publications like The Washington Post , TIME , mental_floss , Popular Science and JSTOR Daily . Learn more at erinblakemore.com .

Watch: Astronaut Gives Virtual Tour Of International Space Station

European space agency (esa) astronaut andreas mogensen offered a detailed view of the international space station (iss)..

Andreas Mogensen first provided a sneak peek into the front section of the space station.

A European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut has offered the public a virtual tour of the International Space Station (ISS). Five space agencies namely NASA, JAXA, Roscosmos, CSA, ESA, and their contractors work together to manage the ISS, which is the largest space station ever constructed, in low Earth orbit. Andreas Mogensen made his way back to Earth from his six-and-a-half-month stay on ISS in the middle of March. He documented his time at the station as a member of NASA's Crew-7 mission by recording a video inside and showing it to his social media followers. 

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In an elaborate post that Andreas Mogensen posted on X (formerly Twitter) on April 12, the ESA astronaut revealed, “It's been a month since I left the International Space Station. One of the very last things that I did on undock day, was film a tour of the Space Station. It is as much a keepsake for me as it is a way for me to share the wonder of the International Space Station with you. Whenever I will miss my time onboard ISS, and especially my crewmates, I will have this video to look at.”

It's been a month now since I left the International @Space_Station . One of the very last things that I did on undock day, was film a tour of the Space Station. It is as much a keepsake for me as it is a way for me to share the wonder of the International Space Station with you.… pic.twitter.com/oFR0VXR06A — Andreas Mogensen (@Astro_Andreas) April 12, 2024

Andreas Mogensen first provided a sneak peek into the front section of the space station. Above it, there was a SpaceX Dragon craft, which brought him to Earth on March 12. The roughly 114-by-22-foot Columbus module, which the ESA supplied as a science lab back in 2008 could be spotted in the clip. Viewers could also make out the smaller Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) kept across the lab. Also known as Kibo, it was built soon after the construction of Columbus. 

Several more ISS amenities, like the workstations, storage units, restrooms, exercise equipment, several docking nodes, and even the station kitchen, were shown by Andreas Mogensen through first-hand observation. The cupola, which offers an unparalleled 360-degree panorama of the Earth as well as an impressive look at the space station's overall size, is unquestionably the most stunning spot on the entire International Space Station (ISS).

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ESA tour of the International Space Station

ESA has developed an interactive film 360 tour of the ISS which can be accessed using a standard web browser:

View the tour here .

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Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station

Cosmos Editorial

Ever wondered what it’s like to be an astronaut aboard the International Space Station? Now, thanks to the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Google, you can find out. {%recommended 677%}

Pesquet returned to Earth in June after six months as a European Space Agency astronaut on the ISS. During his trip, he made an exhaustive photographic survery of the interior of the station and sent the images down to Google engineers on Earth. They in turn stitched the photos together into 360-degree panoramas that can be navigated using the Google Street View interface. 

So what’s it like? Words like “cramped”, “cluttered” and “claustrophobic” spring to mind for this armchair astronaut, though the explanatory notes are fascinating and the views out the window are truly superb.

Take a look for yourself here . 

You can read more from Pesquet about the experience here and a video showing the behind-the-scenes process of mapping out the ISS and collecting the photos is below.

Originally published by Cosmos as Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station

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Watch NASA astronauts use VR to explore the first lunar space station

N ASA has shared footage showing astronauts using VR headsets to learn what it will be like aboard the Lunar Gateway space station.

The Lunar Gateway will orbit the moon and be used mainly for getting astronauts and cargo to and from the lunar surface during the upcoming Artemis missions. It’ll also be used as a space-based laboratory similar to how the International Space Station, which is in low-Earth orbit, operates today.

The space agency called on experienced astronauts Raja Chari and Nicole Mann to try out the VR experience.

“When they slip on their headsets, they’re not just seeing the station — they’re in it, meticulously surveying every detail and offering crucial insights on design and functionality,” NASA said in an article on its website.

It added: “During VR testing, astronauts engage in a variety of tasks that they expect to encounter in their day-to-day life on Gateway during real Artemis missions, including performing science experiments, retrieving supplies, and preparing warm meals.”

While Chari and Mann no doubt had a blast donning the headsets to explore a virtual representation of the first-ever lunar space station, there’s a serious side to the exercise as their feedback will allow engineers to refine the design of the outpost to make it safer and more comfortable for visitors.

NASA said that the Lunar Gateway, which should be ready to welcome astronauts on the Artemis IV mission currently scheduled for 2028, is set to revolutionize deep space exploration, acting as a testbed for next-generation technology and new science.

It described the lunar space station as a “critical component of the Artemis campaign to return humans to the lunar surface for scientific discovery and pave the way for the first human missions to Mars.”

The multi-modular facility will begin construction toward the end of this decade and take about five years to complete.

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Inside NASA’s ambitious plan to bring the ISS crashing back to Earth

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

By Jon Cartwright

6 August 2024

dpa picture alliance archive/Alamy

The International Space Station (ISS), as well as being the most expensive object ever made, can also lay claim to being one of the most cooperative endeavours in scientific history. Since the beginning of the century, it has been continuously inhabited by a total of 280 crew members – and counting – from 23 countries. While leaders on the ground have been squabbling or even threatening war, astronauts and cosmonauts have been circling Earth unconstrained by geopolitical borders, floating in serene microgravity.

But nothing lasts forever. Sometime around 2030, the ISS project will come to an end. From its orbit about 400 kilometres above Earth, the space station will fall through the atmosphere, burning up and splintering into a thousand pieces before crashing into the Pacific Ocean . It is unlikely that any of it will ever be seen again.

Five of the most important International Space Station experiments

Artificial satellites reenter the atmosphere all the time – almost every day, in fact. But the $150 billion ISS is no ordinary satellite. More than 100 metres long, and with the mass of a fully loaded jumbo jet, it is by far the largest and most complicated one ever built.

Managing the end of the ISS’s life is far from straightforward. How can such a cumbersome object, all 420,000 kilograms of it, be brought down and destroyed safely? Should it be destroyed at all? And will we ever see its ilk again?

The history of the station dates back to the cultural chauvinism of the 1980s, when NASA – calling it “Freedom” – intended it to challenge the Soviet space…

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Nasa to provide crew flight test, space station missions update.

Tiernan P. Doyle

Nasa headquarters.

NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Aug. 7, to discuss ongoing International Space Station operations, including the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test and NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.  

Audio of the briefing will stream live on NASA’s website .

Agency participants include:

• Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate
• Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program
• Dana Weigel, manager, International Space Station Program

To ask questions during the teleconference, media must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the call to Jimi Russell at: [email protected] . NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

For more than two decades, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge, demonstrating new technologies, and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy , NASA’s Artemis campaign is underway at the Moon, where the agency is preparing for future human exploration of Mars.

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station

Josh Finch / Jimi Russell Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1100 [email protected] / [email protected]

Related Terms

• International Space Station (ISS)
• Commercial Crew
• ISS Research
• Space Operations Mission Directorate

Virtual Campus for space station

On 8 September 2000 ESA inaugurated a Virtual Campus for the International Space Station (ISS). This exciting new development will allow present and future users of the ISS in Europe to be kept informed on all the new developments taking place, share knowledge and find new research partners.

The European Virtual Campus for the International Space Station (ISS) was inaugurated in September at the ISS User Information Centre in Noordwijk in the Netherlands. Designed and constructed by technical and scientific teams from agencies and industries in the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, as well as 10 Member States of the European Space Agency, the ISS is the largest space science and technology venture ever undertaken.

The ISS provides new and exciting opportunities and advantages that are unmatched in quality and quantity by any space system to date. Both the pressurised and non-pressurised laboratories of the station will be open to European scientific researchers, development engineers and commercial service providers. The Virtual Campus will attract new users to the ISS and ensure that they are able to fully benefit from the many unique services that the ISS will provide.

Some of the many facilities of the Virtual Campus

• Through the Internet, and the television production and transmission facilities of the ISS User Information Centre, the Virtual Campus will be able to reach a wide audience to publicise the important research conducted on the ISS, as well as on the spacecraft and ground facilities whose work will complement that of the space station. This will include research using the gravity-free environment of the station and research in other scientific and engineering disciplines able to benefit from the role of the ISS as a technology testbed and demonstrator, and a platform for new services in and from space.
• The Virtual Campus will play an important role in building up joint research teams by providing information on planned research and applications. This is already happening for the microgravity applications programme where ESA has set up Topical Teams to allow researchers from academia to team up with more application-oriented researchers from industrial laboratories on topics of common interest which may have a commercial perspective.
• Regular lectures will be held on the scientific, technological and application-oriented aspects of space station utilisation and virtual institutes will be set up within the Campus for the many scientific disciplines able to benefit from the ISS’s research facilities. The first candidates are a Virtual Institute for Health Care and a Virtual Institute for Exobiology.
• ESA will exploit the Virtual Campus to benefit scientists and industry by using it to publicise announcements on research opportunities available in the ISS and other experimental facilities, both in space and on the ground, whose work is connected to that of the space station. Those interested will be able to request information and advice on how to respond to these announcements and ensure that their experiments comply with ISS requirements.
• Visitors to the Virtual Campus can access an online database, which lists the particular expertise and experience of the research institutes, industrial companies, space agencies and government authorities involved in using the ISS. In addition they will be able to contact the engineers at ESA, other space agencies and in the European space industry who are responsible for developing the European research facilities on board the ISS. The programme managers in these organisations who are involved in the strategic planning for space station utilisation, and the attribution of resources and access rights, will also be available for consultation.

All this information is available without having to move from your computer and/or television. The sophisticated communications and information tools at ESA’s ISS User Information Centre will be used to transmit video and audio live broadcasts from the ISS using satellite television as well as Internet streaming videos. Users can take part in discussions via the Internet or telephone, and Internet chat sessions and interactive virtual reality tours of the ISS will also be part of the information programme.

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Related Links

More information and video clips

Esa's iss homepage, iss launch news, iss (nasa pages).

Earth Educators Rendezvous with Infiniscope and Tour It

At the Earth Educator's Rendezvous, held July 15-19, 2024, NASA's Infiniscope project from Arizona State University hosted a two-day workshop aimed at empowering Earth educators with the tools to design and build virtual tours (VTs). This hands-on session provided participants with a unique opportunity to experience first-hand how to create immersive virtual tours using Tour It, a free virtual tour creator developed by the NASA Science Activation program's Infiniscope team. The workshop focused on making the benefits of place-based education more accessible through digital means. One participant remarked, "I have learned more than I could imagine about teaching, communicating, how to be a student, and how to human."

The workshop encouraged participation in a Sunday pre-Rendezvous field trip titled "Crossing the Pennsylvania-New Jersey Fall Zone: from the Neoproterozoic and into the Cenozoic." The Infiniscope team joined this field trip to gather media that workshop participants could use to create their own VTs. This media included 360-degree images, photos, resource documents, diagrams and video interviews with tour guides, Dr. Lily Pfeifer and Dr. Aaron Barth, both of Rowan University.

Throughout the workshop, participants learned to capture media, design for place-based learning, and accommodate the diverse needs of their students, ultimately equipping them to create immersive virtual field experiences that enrich their educational practices. Reflecting on their experience, a participant shared, "I have been exposed to so many things such as the use of place-based learning, creating my own digital content, and publishing – which seemed daunting hitherto, but now, I feel comfortable."

When asked how they might use Tour It in their teaching, one educator responded, "Not only will I finish the work on the Sunday field trip and submit it to the [contributed content] of [Infiniscope], I will actually USE THIS IN MY K-12 classroom. Without a doubt, I have found an excellent way to get kids to experience the geology out there in a personal way that might just spur them to make a trip to see it in real life."

Additionally, another attendee remarked, "I feel much more prepared to make an effective virtual tour for my courses and other courses at my institution or in collaboration with others. I appreciate the acknowledgement that there are cultural aspects to locations that should be included and the rubric offers a framework to build balanced experiences."

The workshop highlighted the power and value of in-person field trips for educators in field sciences while addressing practical challenges, such as lack of transportation and funding. VTs, offering similar educational impacts, can be used more frequently and are not hindered by logistical constraints. Tour It, a user-friendly, NASA-funded tool, was introduced as a solution to the accessibility barriers of creating digital learning experiences. Unlike more complex VT tools, Tour It requires minimal training and operates within a web browser, allowing educators to upload 360° imagery and build comprehensive virtual tours complete with text, image, or video annotations, all VR-compatible.

Experience an example of a VT created with Tour It during this workshop .

The Infiniscope project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AD79A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn

Related Terms

• Earth Science
• Opportunities For Educators to Get Involved
• Science Activation

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