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Speaking of the internet, how would you like to take a virtual tour of the ISS from your own computer?

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NASA Connect traveled northeast to NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia

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to find out about the Virtual International Space Station.

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The Virtual International Space Station, or VISS, is an immersive, three-dimensional model of the space station

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that can be installed on your computer.

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Once installed, you'll be able to walk about the interior and fly around the exterior of the ISS

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as if you were on a spacewalk.

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The virtual environment is similar to virtual computer games you may play.

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You can take a tour of each module of the station and click on the red question marks for additional information.

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The VISS allows you to have a realistic astronaut perspective on what it'll be like to work and live in the station.

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But Pat, why was the Virtual International Space Station created?

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That's a good question.

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As you learned earlier, the space station allowed many different experiments to be conducted all at once.

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The problem is this can also make things difficult for the scientists and researchers.

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You see, there are hundreds and hundreds of documents that go into a bunch of detail about what the station can do.

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Scientists and researchers who aren't familiar with the station's capabilities

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will have to sort through all those documents to find out if the ISS could help them with their experiments.

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The VISS was created so potential users of the station, like scientists,

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can use their computer and actually walk up to an experiment facility on the station,

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just like he or she would do to a book in a library,

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then quickly skim information to see if that facility would help with their research.

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Currently, the VISS is the only publicly available 3D environment to introduce people to the many capabilities of the ISS.

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That's awesome. How can we get the Virtual ISS?

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You can download the Virtual International Space Station at this website.

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Because the tour includes the completed International Space Station,

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the files are quite large, so allow some time to download them.