One of the berthing locations is used by the Cupola, which houses a Robotic Work Station inside it to assist in the assembly/maintenance of the ISS, and offers a window for Earth observations.

The module has three redundant berthing ports that were not scheduled to be used prior to the end of the Space Shuttle program, although there is a Power Data Grapple Fixture reserved for the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre), which is located on the zenith berthing location.

In the current ISS configuration Tranquility is docked to the port berthing location of Unity.

As such, the three unused berthing locations of Tranquility were disabled as the node's close proximity to other segments would prohibit the port's direct use for cargo spacecraft or using the docking module PMA-3, which was relocated from Harmony to the port berthing location of Tranquility for storage.

In addition, on 27 May 2015 the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module was moved from the nadir of Unity, to the forward port side of Tranquility to free up Unity as a backup port for Commercial Resupply Services cargo spacecraft from SpaceX and Orbital Sciences.

[9][10] In April 2016, as part of the cargo payload from SpaceX CRS-8, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was attached to Tranquility on its aft port for a two-year duration.

Users were allowed to choose from among four provided names (Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity, and Venture), or to suggest their own.

[13] In early voting, fans of the science fiction TV series Firefly boosted "Serenity", also the name of the show and film's eponymous spacecraft, to the top with 86%.

[17] Other popular user suggestions included "myYearbook", "SocialVibe", "Ubuntu", and the name of Scientology's galactic overlord: "Xenu".

[19] In addition, United States Congressman Chaka Fattah stated that he believes that paying attention to democracy and voting results should not be limited to earthbound organizations so he planned to use congressional power to force NASA to honor the winning Colbert write-in votes.

[20] On 14 April 2009, astronaut Sunita Williams appeared on The Colbert Report, and announced the name of the node would be Tranquility.