For the First Time, the ISS Has 8 Spacecraft Docked Simultaneously

The International Space Station has been consistently occupied since the Expedition 1 crew arrived in November 2000, but sometimes it gets a little busier than others. At the moment, eight spacecraft are docked with the ISS, requiring all its docking ports. This is a first in its 25-year history, NASA reports.

The ISS is currently playing host to Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-27, connected to the Russian Prichal module; Russian MS-28, attached to the Rassvet module; Northrop Grumman's Cygnus-23 cargo module, attached to the station's Unity module; the Russian robotic cargo spacecraft Progress-92 and Progress-93, both attached to the Russian Poisk and Zvezda modules; and the Japanese HTV-X1 cargo craft, which is connected to the nadir port of the Harmony Node 2. There are a pair of SpaceX Dragon capsules (Crew-11 and CRS-33) docked with the Harmony module, too.

This is all so much that NASA recently had to ...