Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the International Space Station, where the space walks and construction are still going strong as it orbits earth.
The ISS now is the largest structure in space ever built, occupied by international crews since 2000.
Today, the station is an active laboratory with hundreds of science experiments being conducted on board, advancing humanity’s knowledge about how to live in space and how to improve life on earth.
To mark the anniversary, below are some interesting facts.
15 sunrises, sunsets
Circling earth at 28,000 kilometres per hour every 92 minutes, the crew members aboard the International Space Station “experience 15 or 16 sunrises and sunsets every day,” Nasa’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Project Office describes.
Since the launch of the first ‘Sunrise’ (Zarya), the station has ‘seen’ more than 175,000 sunrises and sunsets.
12 months for the first year-long mission
Stephen K. Robinson in the third session of extravehicular activity (EVA) in August 2005.To date, the longest expedition on board the International Space Station was 215 days and eight hours, logged by the Expedition 14 crew of Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin from September 2006 to April 2007. Their seven months in space was one-and-a-half months longer than the typical resident crew’s stay, of five-and-a-half months.
But as attention turns to sending astronauts out into the solar system, Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko were sent out on a year-long stay on the space station.
Their stay will further inform scientists’ understanding of how the human body reacts to extended exposure to microgravity.
Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst (not shown) work outside the space station’s Quest airlock in the first of three spacewalks for Expedition 41 in October 2014.10 space agencies sending astronauts
Fifteen nations partnered to build the International Space Station – the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and members of the European Space Agency (ESA) – but the people who have visited the ISS have not been limited to those countries.
In addition to Nasa, Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Canadian Space Agency and ESA, astronauts have visited the outpost representing five other space agencies, including France’s CNES, Brazil’s AEB, Malaysia’s Angkasa, South Korea’s KARI and Italy’s ASI.
Eight space tourist flights
Not every individual to fly to the station did so under the auspices of a country or space agency. Seven so-called “space tourists”, or “spaceflight participants”, funded their own multimillion dollar trips to the space station under an agreement with Roscosmos and the US space tourism agency Space Adventures.
California businessman Dennis Tito was the first to pay his own way to the station in 2001.
Following Tito into orbit were South African software developer Mark Shuttleworth, New Jersey entrepreneur Gregory Olsen, Iranian-American engineer Ahousheh Ansari, Hungarian-American Microsoft Office inventor Charles Simonyi, second-generation US astronaut and computer game pioneer Richard Garriott and Canadian Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte.
Atlantis astronauts pose in the Destiny laboratory in April 2002.Simonyi enjoyed his first space trip in 2007 so much that he returned for another flight two years later.
Seven visiting vehicles
Zarya’s launch began the effort, but it wasn’t until Nasa’s space shuttle delivered and mated the Unity module that the International Space Station was really born.
The shuttle fleet was critical to the assembly of the space station, delivering to orbit the truss segments that formed the outpost’s backbone, as well as most of the modules. When the ISS was completed, the orbiters were retired.
Six other spacecraft continue to supply and staff the station.