Did You Know? Astronauts on the International Space Station See a Sunrise Every 90 Minutes!

Alright, so you know how we all get one beautiful sunrise and one peaceful sunset here on Earth each day, right? Well, prepare to have your mind a little bit blown, because if you were living on the International Space Station (ISS), your ‘day’ would be a whole lot more… luminous!

Did you know that astronauts aboard the ISS actually experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every single day? Yep, you heard that right – sixteen of each! Imagine having your morning coffee with a new sunrise appearing every hour and a half, followed by another sunset just 45 minutes later, all day long. It’s a pretty wild thought!

The reason for this constant celestial show is that the ISS isn’t just floating around up there; it’s zooming around Earth at an incredible speed of about 17,500 miles per hour (that’s roughly 28,000 kilometers per hour!). At that speed, it completes an entire orbit around our planet in a mere 90 minutes. So, as it circles the globe, it’s constantly moving in and out of Earth’s shadow, giving the crew a new dawn and dusk approximately every 45 minutes.

It really puts into perspective how fast and how high up they are, doesn’t it? While we’re down here enjoying our one glorious golden hour, they’re getting a rapid-fire sequence of them, all from a truly breathtaking vantage point. Talk about a different kind of ‘daily commute’!