For The First Time In Its 25 Years, All 8 Docking Stations On The ISS Have A Visiting Spacecraft

With around five years left to go before it leaves Earth's orbit and is crashed into the ocean, NASA has announced that the International Space Station (ISS) has hit a new milestone. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The ISS has been operational since the start of the millennium. Since November 2, 2000, humans have had a continuous presence in space , conducting experiments in microgravity aboard humanity's orbiting laboratory. But all good things must come to an end, and at the end of 2030, NASA and its international partners will retire the ISS for good, before crashing it into the Pacific Ocean in early 2031.

The first pieces of the ISS were launched in 1998, and by the time operations are over in 2030, these part