The Sun and the International Space Station

The Sun with time lapse images of the International Space Station superimposed in an arc from left to right.

NASA, 2020

This composite of six images shows the International Space Station (ISS) transit in front of the Sun from its position in low Earth orbit, which took less than one minute. Even though the Sun is 93 million miles away, astronauts aboard the ISS must protect themselves from solar radiation when they are in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.