What is an international space station?

International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility in the low orbit of the country, orbiting an altitude between 320 km (199 Mi) to 345 km (214 million). Since May 2007, the International Space Station consists of four small rooms known as "pressurized modules" in engineering speech, and has a live capacity for three astronauts. The station is scheduled to complete since 2010 and will include a total of 10 pressure modules, along with the function of Soyuz spacecraft as a lifeboat and a large non -pressurized truss structure for solar panels.

Currently, the international space station is the only permanent device with a crew in orbit. It has been created as a way to share high cost of duration and maintenance of equipment in orbit. Five agencies participating in the ISS project are NASA (United States), Roskosmos (Russia), Jaxa (Japan), CSA (Canada) and ESA (European Union). Before the station is completed in 2010, the entire Project will cost around $ 100 billionor more. The International Space Station has been in orbit since 1998, but has only been occupied since 2000. It has already had 124 different visitors, including five paying space tourists who paid $ 20 million (USD) to visit the station.

The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya (which means "Dawn" in Russian), was launched in 1998 and circled autonomously for almost two years due to delay in the construction of Zvezda ("Star" in Russian), service module), service module). Zvezda also includes a shower and toilet, exercise equipment, kitchen for food preparation and is the largest module at the International Space Station with a small margin. Shortly after the Start of Zarya , the American Unity module was attached to it. Is the truth of its name, Unity acts as a connecting node Between other modules and sometimes referred to as a node 1 .. The final module that is in the present toRunning in orbit is an American laboratory module where scientific research is carried out.

Since the end of 2007 to 2010, six other modules have been launched: Node 2, Columbus laboratory module, Japanese experimental module, multipurpose laboratory module (Russian), node 3 and a given cargo module. The aim is to complete the space station by 2010. Most modules have an expected service life of 15 years, so the first module can replace or discard the first module, but most of the station should remain in operation by 2020.