One of the big challenges on board the station is keeping track of where everything is located. We have an inventory management system (IMS) that we can access to help us find items, by part number, barcode, or name. Initially, I think we were all surprised by the fact that you could actually find a lot of items using IMS. However, the system is only as good as the data it has…so we still occasionally lose items.

Peggy Whitson,
Expedition Five NASA ISS Science Officer