Everything you need to know about the International Space Station - VastlyCurious

     The International Space Station has helped us conduct various experiments which cannot be conducted on Earth and these experiments aided us to understand the cosmos and also about our own planet Earth. The ISS has served well uncovering numerous discoveries and historic breakthroughs. The ISS could help us understand the long term effects of staying in space on humans and it provided great insights into how the human body reacts to outer space. The end of ISS is also near and the governments are planning to bring down the space station by crashing the ISS into the Nemo point by 2028. So how did this massive structure go to space and how useful it has been to humans?

International Space Station

Building the International Space Station

    The International Space Station, which was first thought of as grand science fiction become a reality when the two Russian modules were assembled 0n 1969 in the Earth's lower orbit. The planning was started in the 1940s when the scientists believed that the construction of a space station could be made possible. But the actual construction of the ISS was started in 1998 with the help of the first American-made reusable rockets. The construction took more than a decade and 30+ Space missions to assemble the entire space station. The ISS was taken into space piece by piece over the years and it was either assembled by the space station's crew or using the docking mechanisms.

Building the International Space Station

    The first crew resided on the ISS on November 2nd, 2000 and until then the space station has always been occupied by Astronauts. Zarya was the first ISS module to be launched into space by the proton rocket in November 1998. The International Space Station was assembled by 36 space shuttles. The contribution to the ISS came from 15 nations around the globe and the major contributors are NASA from the United States, Roscosmos from Russia, and the European Space Agency (ESA). Later the Canadian Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency joined the party! The ISS was not only used to conduct experiments in a vacuum and microgravity, but it also served commercial and educational purposes.

    After assembling all the components, the ISS has an area of a football field and it weighs about 391,000 kgs (861,804 lbs). The ISS was built in Earth's lower orbit at about 400 km above the surface of the Earth, which is actually lower than the usual satellite launches. So far over 200 people from several countries around the world have visited the space station. It revolves around the Earth at a speed of 28,800 km/h (17898.5 mph). ISS provides an area to conduct several scientific experiments and provide information about the long time effects on Astronauts in outer space. How does the ISS stay in low Earth orbit and how does it work?

How the International Space Station works?

    The International Space Station is the largest artificial object in outer space and so it is usually visible from our naked eye. Over the years, several modules have been assembled to the ISS, which are usually units to conduct more scientific experiments. The large arrays of solar panel powers the entire space station and solar arrays are movable so that it adjusts the panels to face the sun. Every module assembled on the ISS has several docking ports to link to other modules and the modules are often serviced by the team of astronauts or the robotic arms in the ISS. The International Space Station was thought to serve as a base for interplanetary travel. But it has proved its worth in different ways and the ISS is expected to operate beyond 2028, even this megastructure can't last forever.

View from the window of the ISS

    The International Space Station completes almost 15.5 orbits around the Earth per day and as the gravity of the Earth pulls the ISS towards the atmosphere, the space station has to moves from falling into the atmosphere. This is done by boosting manoeuvres using the Zvezda Module present at the space station. The module provides enough thrust to push the ISS from falling into the atmosphere. The main purpose of the International Space Station is to focus on long-term effects on humans in outer space and to conduct experiments in the vacuum and microgravity. We have conducted several experiments in various fields and some amazing discoveries have been made in the experiments conducted on the ISS.

What is the purpose of the International Space Station?

    The grand plan of the ISS is that it will act as a base for our future missions to space, but then that was not the case. Though it was not a failure, we learned so much about space and also about our own planet. ISS acted as a perfect platform to study and observe various experiments in a vacuum and microgravity. Various researches were conducted in several fields like astronomy, human research, astrobiology, etc. Astronauts were also observed during their entire stay in the space station and their health was continuously monitored. This data about the long-term effects on humans in space will be useful for next space missions or interplanetary j0urneys. We might find out for how long can humans stay in space which will prepare us for the long journey.

Astronauts performing Spacewalks in ISS

    In NASA's Lab in ISS, the fifth state of matter Bose-Einstein condensate was produced which provided the understanding of the laws of quantum mechanics. Growing food in outer space was tested in outer space and it turned out to be successful. Since then many techniques have been devised to grow food in space which could turn useful for future interplanetary manned missions. The International Space Station also gave us insights into our planet, providing information about the Earth's landmasses, oceans and vegetation. The Earth's resources are monitored by remote sensing techniques from the ISS. The details about the cosmic particles are collected from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which might help us understand the Universe. S0 far the ISS offered us unique views of Earth's vegetation, oceans and atmosphere, and also about the cosmos.