One minute you’re fooling around in a couple of short-lived space stations
The First Days on the Space Station
December 6, 1998: Attaching Zarya to Unity using space shuttle Endeavour’s Canadarm. Image credit: NASA/IMAX
The International Space Station is too large for any one rocket to boost off-planet, so it was assembled one piece at a time in orbit. The first component, the Zarya Control Module, launched on November 20, 1998, followed by the Unity node and pressurized mating adapters in December, the Zvezda Service Module service module in July 2000, and the first truss with more mating adapters in October. Finally the next month, the first crew set forth in a Soyuz spacecraft to actually live on the station.
December 2, 2000: The International Space Station was just the Zarya Control Module, Unity Node, Zvezda Service Module and Z1-Truss when Expedition 1 moved in. Image credit: NASA
Expedition 1 docked with the space station on November 2, 2000, opening the hatch at 4:23 am for NASA astronaut William Shepherd and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko to start 136 days in space. Their mission overlapped with the arrival of more astronauts, with each subsequent mission overlapping for fifteen years of uninterrupted human presence in space.
Most astronauts on the station stay nearly six months, split between two six-month expeditions. Image credit: NASA
The Bits and Bolts that Make a Station in Space
June 6, 2014: Solar panels provide the power to keep the space station functioning. Image credit: NASA
Meanwhile, the space station just keeps on growing in continuous slow construction until the present day, with new docking ports and an inflatable module expected soon. Major structural components were contributed by the United States and Russia, but also by the European Union, Canada, and Japan.
April 24, 2015: Scott Kelly’s living quarters for his Year in Space
The station is now just under 110 meters (357 feet) end-to-end, massing 419,455 kilograms (924,739 pounds). The eight solar arrays hold 262,400 solar cells generate 84 to 120 kiowatts of electricity
September 16, 2007: The International Space Station after the installation of a new set of solar panels. Image credit: NASA
The International Space Station flies at an average altitude of 400 kilometers (248 miles) above the Earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour). It circles the planet every 90 minutes for 15 sunrises (and sunsets!) a day. It’s the next-brightest object in the sky after the moon, and can be seen with the naked eye. Use Spot the Station to determine the next time it’ll be visible from your location!
November 2, 2015: Expedition 45 members celebrate 15 years of living on the space station. Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
A Truly International Affair
Although started by the American and Russian space programs, the International Space Station is a truly global project. Image credit: NASA
The number of astronaut-visitors to the station are even more varied than the countries that built it: in 15 years, the station has hosted over 220 people from 17 different countries including Kazakhstan, Brazil, Denmark
July 21, 2009: Clockwise from bottom-left: Mike Barratt, Roman Romanenko, unidentified crew member, Koichi Wakata, Robert Thirsk, Julie Payette, Frank De Winne, and Christopher Cassidy. Out of frame or not clearly seen: Mark Polansky, Doug Hurley, Dave Wolf, Tim Kopra, Tom Marshburn, and Gennady Padalka.
Some of the most unusual crew combinations were on April 2010 when four women were in space at the same time (the highest concentration of women in orbit ever), and in July 2009 when 13 astronauts from five nationalities were on the station simultaneously. The crew included astronauts from Belgium, Canada, Japan, Russia, and the United States.
The Challenges of Staying Alive
September 23, 2015: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5)
Keeping astronauts alive is no easy task. They require food, water, air, and heat to survive so far from the comforting environment of Earth. Each six-month expedition of six astronauts requires 6,350 kilograms (7 tons) of supplies carried to the station by a mix of space agency and commercial vehicles.
March 3, 2011: Expedition 26 and STS-133 crew members share a meal in the Unity node. Image credit: NASA
Like all remote fieldworkers, the quality of the food is always a good topic of discussion. Of the more than 26,500 meals
Astronaut Kjell Lindgren demonstrates that fresh fruit deliveries are always highly welcome. Image credit: NASA
The space station isn’t all about people: it takes a lot of computer power to everything operating smoothly. That’s split between space and ground: around 1.8 million lines of flight software code are run by 52 computers on the space station, with another 3.3 million lines of software code on ground support computers. In the American segment of the station, 44 computers communicate via 100 data networks transferring 400,000 signals about pressure, temperature, valve positions, and more. Their hard drive space totals a measly 1.5 gigabites, far smaller than the 500-gigabyte hard drive of a single modern personal computer.
September 1, 2009: Kevin Ford and Robert Thirsk operate the Canadarm2 from the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA
Stepping Outside for a Spacewalk
December 12, 1998: Astronauts Jerry Ross and Jim Newman connect power and data cables between the Unity and Zarya modules. Image credit: NASA
Even with all that space, astronauts occasionally duck out of the station to stretch their legs. Between NASA and Roscosmos, 121 people have completed 189 spacewalks. Starting with astronauts Jerry Ross and James Newman on December 7, 1998, people have spent 1,184 hours constructing and maintaining the station. Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka share the record for most spacewalks with 10 each totalling 67 hours, 40 minutes and 38 hours, 37 minutes respectively.
Even more spacewalks are scheduled for next week
Science on the Orbital Laboratory
September 2015: Kimiya Yui and Kjell Lindgren remove items from storage rack to make room for new communications hardware. Image credit: NASA
Each mission gets more ambitious. Expedition 1 started off with an impressive 22 scientific experiments (with an experiment in protein crystal growth starting even before their arrival!), but astronauts now get to spend about 35 hours a week on research. That means over the nearly six months of Expedition 45 and 46, the astronauts will conduct a total of 191 scientific investigations. The experiments are housed in 29 standardized racks with equipment slotted in and removed
September 3, 2009: A suitcase-sized materials experiment on the outside of the space station. Image credit: NASA
Even the research on the space station is international: the over 1,760 investigations on the orbiting laboratory involve researchers from 83 countries! Continuing in the tradition of Skylab and the space shuttles
November 28, 2014: Releasing the SpinSat to test a new thrust technique for satellites. Image credit: NASA
The results are published in more than 1,200 scientific papers over the years. That’s not all thumb-twiddling, either: the very first experiment ever run on the station on growing protein crystals is leading to the development of new medical treatments, including new drugs for treating muscular dystrophy.
The Eye Tracking Device for astronauts was so good we now use it during laser eye surgery on Earth. Image credit: NASA
Using astronauts as guinea pigs
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti conducts plethysmography and pulmonary function system measurements for the Brain Drain investigation. Image credit: NASA
Even when astronauts aren’t directly involved as test subjects, we can still get good science: their research into the genetic pathway activating in Salmonella bacteria led to new microbial vaccines, while the Capillary Flow Experiments (CFE) is helping understand fluid behaviour in microgravity, leading to the development of new terrestrial medical devices.
Alex Gerst works on a Capillary Flow Experiments investigating fluid behaviour in microgravity. Image credit: NASA
Even the hardware is inspiring developments on Earth. The hardcore efforts on the space station to reduce-reuse-recycle ) is improving water purification and processing efforts for the rest of the planet (up to 65% of all water is recaptured
The Canadarm2
Equipment on the outside of the station also lends a helping hand. The Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) is the latest effort to monitor water quality from space
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02, a particle detector for low Earth orbit space radiation environment. Image credit: NASA
Living in Space Benefits Everyone
March 16, 2012: Star trails seen in a long exposure from the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit
The space station also directly improves life for the rest of us, directly and indirectly. Along with all the science being done in orbit, we pragmatically benefit from an outpost in space to support commercial industry. The space station support commercial space operations, including cargo runs to supply the station
Cubesats launching from the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA
More indirectly, having children grown up who have never known a world where we didn’t live among the stars is an incredible thing for a bunch of hairless apes scrabbling about in the dirt. With fifteen years of uninterrupted habitation, the International Space Station is a mark of global cooperation, of coming together to achieve the impossible, and making science fiction into a reality.
2009: The International Space Station with freshly-installed solar panels.
Top image: NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson takes a break to gaze through the Cupola during Expedition 24 in 2010. Credit: NASA
Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.