ISS · connecting…
Halvard is a popular-science project about spaceflight. We show where the ISS is flying right now, explain complex things in plain words and gather the top news from the industry.
01 / ISS live
The station circles the Earth in about 92 minutes and completes roughly 16 orbits a day. Its position on the map updates every three seconds; the dashed line shows the upcoming orbit and the night side of the Earth is shaded.
the distance the station has travelled since you opened the site.
02 / In plain words
Short explanations without formulas: how things work and why.
A — Launch
Going up is not enough — you have to go sideways, fast. Without enough speed the spacecraft simply falls back. That is why a rocket starts tilting almost immediately after liftoff and builds horizontal velocity, and most of the fuel is spent on speeding up, not on climbing.
B — Orbit
Gravity does not go away up there: at the altitude of the ISS it is only about a tenth weaker than on the ground. Astronauts float because the station and its crew are continuously falling around the planet — and always missing it.
C — Observation
The atmosphere shimmers and blurs the image, and it also absorbs ultraviolet and much of the infrared. Above it, a telescope sees more sharply and in wavelengths that cannot be reached from the ground. That is how Hubble works — and why it was serviced right there in orbit.
D — Radio astronomy
Radio telescopes catch radiation the eye cannot see. Radio waves pass through clouds and cosmic dust, so observations can go on in daylight and under overcast skies. This is how pulsars and the cosmic microwave background — the echo of the Big Bang — were discovered.
03 / News
The latest stories from specialist outlets. The feed updates automatically and every item links to the original source.
04 / Essays
Sourced opinion pieces on where the industry is heading and which lessons are worth remembering.
What had recently been a source of national pride and a symbol of technological sovereignty turned into a heavy burden on the state budget.
In a whole range of fundamental scientific fields, the USSR was not merely not inferior to the United States — it was ahead of it.
That comparison not only simplifies history; it also misleads us about the nature of both races.
05 / People in orbit
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06 / Contact
Questions, story ideas, corrections and partnership proposals — we read every message.
contacthalvardru@gmail.com