Did you know International Space Station (ISS) is the single most expensive object in the world? It costs over 100 billion dollars.
What is International Space Station?
Basically, it’s a modular space station in low orbit. It’s a large Spacecraft orbit around the Earth. You should know that ISS is a science lab in itself. In 1984 an American Proposal come up with a module to build an Earth Orbiting Station. It was launched back on 20th Nov 1998. Since then astronauts have been living in the ISS.
What are the countries involved in International Space Station?
We hope you know that ISS isn’t a single country’s project. Five participating space agencies are involved in this multinational collaborative project: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). But 16 nations were involved in the construction of the ISS: The United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
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Little details of ISS in and out-
If you are curious about how does it looks from the inside, then we’ve something for you. The space station is like a big house from the inside with five bedrooms. With one gymnasium it has two bathrooms and a big bay window.
Speed: 5 miles or 8 km per sec.
Mass: 419,720 Kg
Length: 73m
Orbital Period: 92.68 minutes.
Orbits per day: 15.5. That almost 125,964 as of December 2020.
Some amazing facts about ISS:
As of 2020, 244-individuals from 19 countries have visited the International Space Station. Astronaut Peggy Whitson holds the record of being there for maximum (665 days) time.
People have lived in space every day since the year 2000.
8 solar arrays with a length of 35m, provide 75 to 90 kilowatts of power. That mainly generates the power.
If you think you’re busy, can’t manage time to work out then think again. Astronauts work out at least two hours a day there. Not because they want to, because they need to. Workout helps mitigate the loss of muscle and bone mass in the human body.
ISS is the second brightest object after the moon, in our night sky.
Just over 50 computers control all the systems on the station. But can you guess how many lines of computer code are there? more than 1.5 million. Plus 3 million lines of software code on the ground support.
The space station is 357 feet end-to-end.
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Why Is the Space Station Important?
The ISS is a home in orbit. The space station’s labs are where scientists do research. This research could not be done on Earth. Scientists study what happens to people when they live in space. NASA has learned how to keep a spacecraft working for a long time. These lessons will be important in the future.
NASA has a plan to send humans deeper into space than ever before. The space station is one of the first steps. NASA will use this works from the space station to get astronauts ready for the journey ahead.