International Space Station

International Space Station

The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station being built in space. The station is a joint project among several entities: the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. Other nations such as Brazil, Italy, and China also work with the ISS through cooperation with other countries.

Building the ISS began in 1998, when a Russian and American module were connected with each other.

Origins

ISS configuration in 2000: from top to bottom, the Unity, Zarya, and Zvezda modules.

In the early 1980s, NASA planned Space Station Freedom as a counterpart to the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations. It never left the drawing board and, with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, it was cancelled. The end of the Space race prompted the U.S. administration officials to start negotiations with international partners Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada in the early 1990s in order to build a truly international space station. This project was first announced in 1993 and was called Space Station Alpha. It was planned to combine the proposed space stations of all participating space agencies: NASA's Space Station Freedom, Russia's Mir-2 (the successor to the Mir Space Station, the core of which is now Zvezda) and ESA's Columbus that was planned to be a stand-alone spacelab.

The first section, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block, was put in orbit in November 1998 on a Russian Proton rocket. Two further pieces (the Unity Module and Zvezda service module) were added before the first crew, Expedition 1, was sent. Expedition 1 docked to the ISS on November 2, 2000, and consisted of U.S. astronaut William Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The new section of the ISS has been named after the astronaut who started it all Maximum Ride. This was announced at 5:13pm Tuesday 5th May, 2009.

Assembly

Module	Launch vehicle	Launch Date	Separate View	View with station
Zarya	Proton-K	1998-11-20
Unity	Space Shuttle Endeavour	1998-12-04
Zvezda	Proton-K	2000-07-12
Destiny	Space Shuttle Atlantis	2001-02-07
Quest	Space Shuttle Atlantis	2001-07-12
Pirs	Progress M-SO1	2001-09-14
Harmony	Space Shuttle Discovery	2007-10-23
Columbus	Space Shuttle Atlantis	2008-02-07
Kibo(ELM)	Space Shuttle Endeavour	2008-03-11
Kibo(PM)	Space Shuttle Discovery	2008-05-31
S6 Truss and Solar Arrays	Space Shuttle Discovery	2009-03-15
Poisk	Progress M-MIM2	2009-11-10
Tranquility and Cupola	Space Shuttle Endeavour	2010-02-08
Rassvet	Space Shuttle Atlantis	2010-05-14
Leonardo	Space Shuttle Discovery	2011-02-24

• 

  Harmony

• 

  Columbus

• 

  Kibo (ELM)

• 

  Kibo (PM)

• 

  Poisk

• 

  Tranquility

• 

  Cupola

• 

  Rassvet

• 

  Leonardo

Life in space

When's Bedtime?
The scientists living in the space station have to get used to all kinds of changes from life on Earth. It takes them only 90 minutes to orbit (go around) the earth, so the sun looks as if it's rising and setting every 45 minutes. This can be pretty confusing, especially when you are trying to decide when you should go to bed! The astronauts try to keep a 24-hour-schedule anyway.

When it really is bedtime, they have to sleep in sleeping bags that are stuck to the wall. They have to strap themselves inside so they will not float away in the middle of a nice dream.

Zero Gravity
In space there is no gravity (this is called zero gravity). To help prepare astronauts experience zero gravity, NASA trainers put the astronauts in the water. Because water makes you float, this is a little like experiencing no gravity. However, in water you can push against the water and move around. In zero gravity, there's nothing to push against, so you just float in the air. Another way of training is going in a plane and making the plane fall to earth very quickly. This lets people experience zero gravity for a very short time. This training can make people quite sick at first.
Since in zero gravity, the astronauts do not use their legs very much, they need to get lots of exercise to keep them from becoming too weak (without gravity, astronauts can get big upper bodies and skinny legs. This is called chicken-leg syndrome). Lots of exercise is needed to keep the astronauts healthy every day.

Eating in space style is pretty hard, too! Water and other liquids do not flow down in space, so if you spilled some milk in a space station, the milk would float around everywhere! Liquids ruin electric equipment, so astronauts have to be very careful in space. They drink by sucking water out of a bag, or from a tube stuck to the wall. They can not put their food on plates because it would just float right off, so they put it in pouches and eat from the pouches. The food is usually dried, because crumbs are very messy things that can ruin the equipment.
Sometimes fresh fruits and vegetables are sent up to the astronauts, but it is very expensive and hard to send it, so they have to prepare a lot of food before they go.

Using the Bathroom in Space Actually, in space, the bathroom should probably be called the restroom instead, because you really can not take baths there. Instead, astronauts use squirt guns to take a shower! One person squirts himself with a gun while other people stand outside with a water vacuum to get rid of all the water that floats out of the shower. This is quite hard, so astronauts usually just take a "sponge bath" with a wet cloth.
Toilets can be another problem. Toilets are supposed to use gravity to work. When you flush the toilet, gravity makes the water go down. Since there is no gravity in space, the toilet must be attached to the astronauts and gently suck away all their waste.