We all have had a dream house that we want to live sometime in our lives. Whether it’s a modest house or a palatial bungalow. As a child, we always have a dream job. This serves an answer to the question “What do you want to become when you grow up”? that elders always ask kids. As a kid, I was fascinated by planes (every kid is) and my answer to the question used to be “I want to be a pilot”. Now, as an adult, things have changed and like most of us, I can only fly in a plane as a passenger.
However, there are a few people who as a part of their job get to travel in a much complex plane, (which is technically called a spacecraft) and get to work from the workstation located few hundreds of kilometers above the earth, which also serves as their home for the duration of stay up there.
I feel by now you must have guessed what this article is about. Yes, I am talking about the International Space Station (ISS). According to the NASA’s website, the area of the ISS usable for the crew to work and stay is larger than a six-bedroom house. The objective of the ISS is to be a laboratory for conducting experiments for future space exploration and studying the impact on human beings if long-term space flights are undertaken by humans in future.
Recently the ISS completed 20 years of launch, so here I share with you 20 facts about the ISS.
1. To begin the construction of ISS in space, the first element was launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikanour Cosmodrome on 20th November 1998.
2. It took approximately two years for the ISS to be ready for a longterm stay of the crew. As per the real-time clock running on the NASA’s website, the total time spent by the crew in orbit at the time of writing this article is 6599 days 19 hours 50 minutes.
3. The equipment for construction was transported in 42 space flights. Out of which 37 were US spacecrafts and 5 were Russian rockets.
4. The ISS program is joint venture by space agencies of 5 countries namely, NASA- USA, Roscosmos- Russia, JAXA- Japan, ESA- Europe and CSA-Canada.
5. Expedition-I reached the ISS on 1-2 November 2000. At present, Expedition 56-57 is on-board the ISS.
6. The ISS is the Earth’s only microgravity laboratory. Microgravity is the experience of weightlessness. The crew of the ISS floating while working there is an example of microgravity.
7. The ISS has a maximum crew strength of 6 members.
8. It travels at an average speed of 29,000 kilometres per hour. It takes 16 rounds of the earth in 24 hours, i.e one day on earth.
9. As per NASA’s website, the ISS is located at distance of about 250 miles above the earth and is visible to the naked eye. One can register for receiving the ISS sighting opportunities alerts in a city at the link below:
Luckily, I was able to see the ISS at 6.28 PM on 22nd November 2018 as per details for Hyderabad. I have also shared the screenshot of the details for the sighting opportunity.
10. The ISS also has a gym that the crew uses for work-out to avoid muscle and bone-mass wastage.
11. The Russian Soyuz rockets are the only space vehicles used for transportation of the crew members to the ISS.
12. The US astronauts in the ISS can vote in the Federal elections as per laws in Texas by an e-ballot sent through secured e-mail to Johnson Spaceflight Centre.
13. One can see how the earth looks like from the ISS through the feed sent by the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) System mounted on ESA’s Columbus module. The feed can be accessed at the link below:
14. As per details updated on June 8th 2018 on the NASA’s website, (when the latest expedition, Expedition 57 docked in the ISS) 232 visitors from 18 countries have visited the ISS.
15. In one earth-day, the ISS travels about the equivalent distance between the earth and the moon and back.
16. The ISS is the second brightest object in the sky, only next to the moon.
17. Peggy Watson of NASA holds the record for longest stay in space, being 665 days.
18. In the year 2001, Pizza Hut completed a pizza delivery to the ISS by sending a pizza aboard a Russian re-supply cargo spacecraft.
19. The end-to-end length of the ISS is 357.5 ft. It is almost equal to that of a soccer field.
20.The ISS weighs 419,725 Kgs, this is only slightly lesser than Maximum Take-off Weight of a Boeing 747-8F cargo aircraft being 442,000 Kgs.
18. In the year 2001, Pizza Hut completed a pizza delivery to the ISS by sending a pizza aboard a Russian re-supply cargo spacecraft.
19. The end-to-end length of the ISS is 357.5 ft. It is almost equal to that of a soccer field.
20.The ISS weighs 419,725 Kgs, this is only slightly lesser than Maximum Take-off Weight of a Boeing 747-8F cargo aircraft being 442,000 Kgs.
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INTERESTING facts on the status of ISS.
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