GAURI's BLOG : INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION.

 WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: A HOME FOR ASTRONAUTS!

First of all happy 24th anniversary to the ISS.

On this occasion my blog is dedicated to the powerful leap of humanity to make our significance in this darkness.

An international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries operates the International Space Station. The one we see the picture like these. To keep it simple this is a science laboratory in space and also a residential area for humans to stay too.

The space station has been continuously occupied by humans since November 2000.

An international crew of seven people lives and works while traveling at a speed of 8km per second, orbiting Earth about every 90 minutes. In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets. So they have 16 GM’s and GN’s. (A big YAWNNNNN).

The acre of solar panels that power the station means sometimes you can look up in the sky at dawn or dusk and see the spaceship flying over your home, even if you live in a big city.

The living and working space in the station is larger than a six-bedroom house (and has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree view bay window).

To control the loss of muscle and bone mass in the human body in microgravity, the astronauts work out at least two hours a day.

 The Astronauts regularly go for a spacewalk for space station construction, maintenance, and upgrading of the ISS.

The solar array attached to ISS has a wingspan (356 feet, 109 meters) longer than the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380 (262 feet, 80 meters). Insane right?

You must wonder was this whole thing put there up all at once? No the large modules and other pieces of the station were delivered on 42 separate flights, 37 on the U.S. space shuttles, and 5 on Russian Soyuz rockets piece by piece.

This colossal space station is 356 feet (109 meters) from one end to another, just one yard less than the full length of an American football field including the end zones. Woahhh!

One more mind-boggling fact is, Wire that connects the electrical power system aboard the space station is 12.87 km longggggggggg.

The 55-foot robot that has seven different joints called Canadarm2 has seven other joints or hands and is used to move entire modules, perform science experiments, and even transport astronauts for a spacewalk.

The ISS has eight docking stations or points so that Eight spaceships can be connected to the space station at once.

Astronauts perform various scientific experiments up there like growing plant samples and anti gravity physics experiments.

Now how do astronauts get the food supplies and other necessary items up there? Do they have some special space grocery store or a mall up there?

Well to your surprise, Four different cargo spacecraft deliver science cargo and supplies named Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, SpaceX’s Dragon, JAXA’s HTV, and the Russian are in Progress.

More than 20 different research payloads can be hosted outside the station at once. The Water Recovery System recycles their excreated liquids into drinkable healthy water. The number two excretion process can be understood from this GIF.

Who controls the ISS? Is there someone like Jarvis from IRONMAN? the answer is almost yes, More than 50 computers control the systems on the space station that are programmed to do so. More than 3 million lines of software code on the ground helps ISS to function every second.

So even if you want to go and stay there you can smoothly run your life there too but with a different purpose. An interesting fact is your height gets increased by 1 or 1.5 cm in space because your spinal cord gets more relaxed and is free from the gravitational pull. But when you come back you are back to normal.

Drop  your thoughts below and let me know!