How to send a letter to the International Space Station

Jacob Aron, reporter

(Image: Francis Dean/Rex Features)

Now that private companies are sending spacecraft to the International Space Station, it might not be too long before we see the first space courier. But how do you address a letter destined for space? Astronaut Donald Pettit, currently aboard the ISS, has come up with an answer.

My sleep station, a coffin-sized box, is located in the fifth deck space of Node 2. From an Earth-based perspective, I pop out of my sleep station as if I were coming out of the floor. I am thus situated on the International Space Station (ISS) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees (the angle of our orbit plane to the equator) and an average altitude of 400 kilometers

Putting all that together, Pettit says his address should be Node 2, Deck 5, ISS, LEO 51.603. That last part is the "space zip code", 51.6 for the orbital inclination and 03 because the ISS is the third space station to occupy the spot, following the Salyut series and Mir.

Even remote Antarctic bases have postal addresses, so the idea isn't without precedent, and Pettit says his system will work as long as there aren't more than 99 different space stations in orbit. Postage is unlikely to be cheap though, given that it costs SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket over $5000 to put 1 kilogram of cargo into low Earth orbit, so you might be better off sending a tweet instead.

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