National Geographic What the International Space Station teaches us about our future in space
A collaboration among international space agencies, this laboratory offers a glimpse into the origins of the cosmos and the possibilities of future spaceflight.
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Subscribe a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Astroanuts take a spacewalk outside the International Space Station, which has been continuously occupied by rotating crews since November 2000.
Photograph courtesy NASA
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What the International Space Station teaches us about our future in space
A collaboration among international space agencies, this laboratory offers a glimpse into the origins of the cosmos and the possibilities of future spaceflight.
ByNadia Drake
September 2, 2020
•
8 min read
Flying some 240 miles above Earth's surface at 17,500 miles an hour, the International Space Station (ISS) is a science laboratory dedicated to helping humans learn how to live in space. Crucially, that means figuring out how the space environment affects biology–and human bodies, especially. Other onboard experiments are aimed at better understanding how the cosmos works, from the highest-energy particles that streak through our solar system to the faraway, extremely dense corpses of former stars.
Continuously occupied by rotating crews since November 2000, the space station is the work of five space agencies: NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. Hundreds of spacefarers have visited the ISS—primarily professional space travelers, although a handful of space tourists have also made the journey. Here’s how the ISS came to be and what scientists hope to learn from experiments conducted there.
What is the ISS?
In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan directed NASA to build an international space station within a decade, declaring that it would “permit quantum leaps” in science research. First, the U.S. partnered with Europe and Japan; it then invited Russia into the enterprise in 1993 because that nation had the most extensive experience operating orbital space stations. By 1998, all five space agencies were on board with the project.