The International Space Station is 20 and is going strong | Human world

It has been 20 years since this month that astronaut William “Bill” Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev became the first people to board the International Space Station (ISS). That first crew resided aboard the station for several months. Since then, the ISS has been continuously inhabited for more than two decades, moving from a small residence to a vast collection of laboratory modules, research platforms and crew quarters. The ISS has provided a platform for hundreds of men and women from countries around the world to live and work, and features prominently in the current list of life span records.

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ISS is a collaboration between the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the participating nations of the European Space Agency. Although the first piece of the ISS – a module called the Zarya – reached orbit in 1998, it took another two years for the first permanent crew to arrive at the station on November 2, 2000.

For Bill Shepherd and the two cosmonauts who made up Expedition 1, the entry into the initial station marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of peaceful cooperation in space, paving the way for astronauts and space women to lead science into name of the benefit of humanity. The work on the space station also promotes space exploration for NASA’s Artemis program to land the first woman and next man on the moon in preparation to continue to Mars.

Highlights of the space station’s history, as recalled by NASA, include:

– The main parts of the space station were delivered on 42 assembly flights: 37 on US space shuttles and five on Russian Proton / Soyuz rockets. The elements were built independently of each other around the world and assembled for the first time in space.

– The space station took 11 years to completely build. Its current configuration measures 357 feet (109 m) from end to end with a mass of nearly 1 million pounds (approximately 454,000 kg). Elements of the space station are continually added and reconfigured.

– There were 221 spacewalks for the assembly, maintenance and upgrades of the space station.

– It took a collaborative effort from 15 nations to build the space station into orbit, and this collaboration continues today. The main space agencies are the United States NASA, the Russian Roscomos, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

– 239 people from 19 countries visited or enjoyed long stays on the space station.

– Gennady Padalka holds the record for cumulative days in space by an astronaut at 879 days.

– Christina Koch holds the longest duration record for a female astronaut at 328 days.

– Valery Polyakov holds the record for the longest single space flight by an astronaut with 437 days, whereby his combined space life is over 22 months.

– More than 2,700 surveys have been conducted on the space station from 108 different countries.

About 250 scientific investigations are being conducted on the station at any given time, while the usual stay of an expedition astronaut aboard the orbiting laboratory is six months. The space station also serves as a test bed for innovative technologies such as waste plastic recycling and carbon dioxide filtration, which are critical for long-duration missions such as the Artemis program.

Other high-impact tasks include taking millions of photographs, not just for the beautiful views, but as scientific work, and on each mission, one of the astronauts is trained to do so. Each photograph is precious because it could be a source of inspiration and / or scientifically useful. Images from the ISS revealed the geography of the Earth and its impact on humans, including the growth of cities. The images also document transient events such as storms, floods, fires and volcanic eruptions.

The safety of crew members is also important for lunar missions, so the data gathered from bone scans and eye exams help inform what happens to the human body in space. State-of-the-art facilities aboard the ISS help NASA increase our understanding of what it will take to expand human exploration beyond low earth orbit, while microgravity research on protein crystal growth and fiber optic cables offers scalable business opportunities and benefits to humanity. The space station expanded these efforts to open a self-sustaining commercial economy in low Earth orbit, where NASA and other government agencies from various nations would serve as part of a community of international commercial suppliers.

If all goes to plan, more space platforms for humans will soon join the ISS. The station still has a lot of time left (it has been officially approved to operate until December 2024 and an extension until the end of 2028 seems likely). Meanwhile, many other projects are ready to take his place.

For example, the Houston-based Axiom Space company plans to use the ISS as the starting point for its station in low Earth orbit. Axiom aims to launch new commercial modules on the ISS in 2024, to provide more living and research space for astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory. And, after the ISS was withdrawn, Axiom said:

Axiom Station will complete construction and detach to operate in the future as a free-flight complex for living and working in space, marking the next phase of humanity’s settlement in low earth orbit.

Axiom will also provide other services, including the purchase of tour flights for the ISS aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules. The company has already signed a contract with SpaceX to that effect, and the first of these private missions is expected to launch at the end of next year.

California-based Orion Span is planning its own low-Earth orbit station called Aurora. The startup says Aurora could launch at the end of 2021 and begin welcoming customers the following year.

There are also foreign government plans for future space stations. Within the next year or so, China has said it will begin building a low-Earth orbit outpost that’s roughly the size of the Soviet-Russian Mir station (which was intentionally deorbed in March 2001). China has already taken significant steps in this direction. For example, since 2011, China has launched two prototype habitat modules into orbit and sent astronauts to both, along with a robotic refueling ship for the second module. India also wants its own outpost in low earth orbit and is working to launch its first manned mission into orbit in 2022, the 75th anniversary of India’s independence from the UK.

Humanity as a whole, however, has plans to push beyond low Earth orbit in the coming years as well. NASA plans to begin building a small space station orbiting the moon called Gateway as part of its ambitious manned lunar exploration Artemis program. The Gateway core – a habitat module and a power and propulsion element – is expected to launch together in late 2023, and a few other pieces will likely join the outpost later.

The gateway will serve as a stopping point for manned and unmanned excursions to the lunar surface, NASA officials said.

The Artemis program aims to drop two astronauts near the moon’s south pole in 2024 (a landing that probably won’t make use of Gateway), but NASA wants the program to do much more as well, particularly to establish a lasting project sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028.

Conclusion: Twenty years ago – on November 2, 2000 – an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts became the first humans to board the ISS. Since then, the ISS has been continuously inhabited for two decades, going from a small residence to a large collection of laboratory modules, research platforms and crew quarters. When the time comes for the station to retire (probably in the mid to late 1920s), many more projects are ready to take its place.

Read More From EarthSky: What Astronauts Think About Life Far From Earth

More info from NASA: NASA counts down for twenty years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station