International Space Station

The International Space Station ( ISS ) is a modular space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific research is conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields. The ISS is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars. The ISS programme evolved from the Space Station Freedom , an American proposal which was conceived in 1984 to construct a permanently manned Earth-orbiting station, and the contemporaneous Soviet/Russian Mir-2 proposal with similar aims. The ISS is the ninth space st

The ISS was originally intended to be a laboratory, observatory, and factory while providing transportation, maintenance, and a low Earth orbit staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. However, not all of the uses envisioned in the initial memorandum of understanding between NASA and Roscosmos have come to fruition. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic, and educational purposes. Scientific research edit The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, with power, data, cooling, and crew available to support experiments. Small uncrewed spacecraft can also provide platforms for experiments, especially those involving zero gravity and exposure to space, but space stations offer a long-term environment where studies can be performed potentially for decades, combined with ready access by human researchers. The ISS simplifies individual experiments by allowing groups

Manufacturing edit Since the International Space Station is a multi-national collaborative project, the components for in-orbit assembly were manufactured in various countries around the world. Beginning in the mid 1990s, the U.S. components Destiny , Unity , the Integrated Truss Structure, and the solar arrays were fabricated at the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Michoud Assembly Facility. These modules were delivered to the Operations and Checkout Building and the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) for final assembly and processing for launch. The Russian modules, including Zarya and Zvezda , were manufactured at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center in Moscow. Zvezda was initially manufactured in 1985 as a component for Mir-2 , but was never launched and instead became the ISS Service Module. The European Space Agency Columbus module was manufactured at the EADS Astrium Space Transportation facilities in Bremen, Germany, along with many other cont

The ISS is a third generation modular space station. Modular stations can allow modules to be added to or removed from the existing structure, allowing greater flexibility. Below is a diagram of major station components. The blue areas are pressurised sections accessible by the crew without using spacesuits. The station's unpressurised superstructure is indicated in red. Other unpressurised components are yellow. The Unity node joins directly to the Destiny laboratory. For clarity, they are shown apart. Russian docking port Solar array Zvezda DOS-8 (service module) Solar array Russian docking port Poisk (MRM-2) airlock Pirs airlock Russian docking port Nauka lab to replace Pirs European robotic arm Prichal Solar array (retracted) Zarya FGB (first module) Solar array (retracted) Rassvet (MRM-1) Russian docking port PMA 1 Cargo spacecraft berthing port Leonardo cargo bay BEAM habitat Quest airlock Unity Node 1 Tranquility Node 3 Bishop airlock ESP-2 Cupola S