If you are intrigued by space then you might know all about a large man-made station placed into earth's orbit known as the International Space Station. Which orbits earth approximately 16 times a day and if you are not aware of what I am talking then let me enlighten you with some very interesting space facts about our very own home in space.
The international space station was constructed with the help of multiple nations and is the single largest structure we humans have put in space. The station was constructed between 1998 and 2011 but it has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000. NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), and the European Space Agency are the major partners who contribute most of the funding; the other partners are the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The station is a continuously evolving entity as we keep on fitting the station with new equipment and components for new missions and various new experiments.
The ISS has always had crew members since its development. It is manned by a crew of three to six people. The majority of the crew is either from the US or Russia. The crew is assisted by a mission control center present in Huston and Moscow. We have other control center places across the globe in Japan, Canada, and Europe. The US had a space shuttle program in the 2000s which was the transportation mode for astronauts. The flights were grounded for some years because of the accident of the Columbia space shuttle, this was the spacecraft that Kalpana Chawla the first woman of Indian origin to go to space used in her space mission.
In 2011 the US space shuttle fleet was retired altogether and the Russian “Soyuz” was the only way of transportation left to take astronauts to ISS. This changed last year with the development of the Crew Dragon which was developed by a collaboration of NASA and SpaceX. This will make it cheaper for NASA to send astronauts to space as they will not have to rely on Russian spacecraft.
Now you know how humans are transported to the ISS let's discuss what is the main purpose of the space station. The ISS is used mainly to perform long-term experiments in space. These experiments will one day help us become a multi-planetary species. We could explore the moon, Mars, or someday a planet identical to earth. The astronauts spend most of the time performing experiments and maintenance. Such as the effects of microgravity on human bodies, biological experiments on rodents, and growing plants in space. They also maintain all the equipment which keeps the ISS running. Alongside all these tasks they also perform spacewalks, post cool videos on social media, and conduct outreach programs for schools and media houses.
To date, 243 individuals from 19 countries have visited the International Space Station and soon four astronauts' names will be joined to this list. NASA is set to launch four astronauts into space on April 22. The crew will be on board ISS for six months.
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