You'd See 16 SUNRISES a Day Living on the Space Station

Right now, high above you, people are watching the Sun rise and set sixteen times every single day.

The International Space Station orbits about 250 miles above your head, circling the entire planet once every ninety minutes, day and night.

To stay up there, it has to move incredibly fast, around 17,500 miles per hour, roughly five miles every second. That's fast enough to cross the United States in about ten minutes. At that speed, the station laps the whole Earth sixteen times a day, which means the crew races through sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets in every twenty-four hours they spend in orbit.

Their whole day and night cycle is completely shattered. A single 'day' in space lasts just forty-five minutes of light, then forty-five minutes of darkness, over and over again, while the crew sleeps strapped to a wall.

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