International Space Station: A home in space

 International Space Station: A home in space

Introduction

We have visited space many times but before NASA began any of these missions, they knew they had to have an outpost in space because what one could do there by living could not be done by just visiting there frequently. So the ISS was built. And the wonderful thing is that the parts created by many countries never touched each other on Earth but they went into pieces in space and then docked each other there. So here is a complete description of the ISS.

The International Space Station

Numerical figures related to the ISS

The ISS is as long as a football field with a width of 109 meters, a length of 73 m and a mass of 419,725 kilograms. It always has six people on board who are replaced every six months. It requires continuous thrust to not heat up or start crashing into Earth. It is currently deployed into Low Earth Orbit or LEO at a height of 400 km. the ISS takes about 92 minutes to travel a distance of 42,587 km around the Earth.

Life on the ISS

The crew there normally wakes up at 6:00 and performs the morning activities followed by a morning inspection of the ISS. Then they eat their breakfast. Food uses more spice to make it more tolerable as microgravity reduces taste. Food is stored in vacuum-sealed packets and astronauts look forward to spaceships bringing fresh fruits and vegetables. The cooking gallery has two warmers, a refrigerator and a water dispenser. The crew has to exercise two hours a day to remain fit. There is also a crew conference time. 

Assembly of the ISS

I will tell you about the assembly in two parts the Integrated Truss Structure and the rest of the ISS. Here they are: 

1) The ISS without the Main Truss

The idea of the space station first began in 1984 when president Ronald Reagen ordered for the ISS to be made in the next 10 years. The real construction began in November 1998 when the Russian Zarya module was sent and it provided energy with its solar wings. It had three docking ports in front and one at the back to connect the other pieces of the ISS. next was the Unity module which needed a Pressurized Mating Adapter(PMA) to attach to the Zarya module. The Unity module, also known as Node1, had the PMA1 and PMA2 attached to it and so PMA1 was used to dock with Zarya. On the other side of Zarya was another Russian module, Zvezda. Its docking port style is the same as Zarya. On top of the Unity was then added the Z1 truss. The main truss is the backbone of the ISS. This part is just a mounting place for it. Below the Unity was PMA3. Mounted on top of the Z1 truss was the P6 truss which was there temporarily as its location would be changed later. It also provided the ISS with its first big solar array wings. To decrease excess heat, this part also had radiator panels. This was the time when astronauts started living aboard the station. The Destiny module required the PMA2 to be removed so that it could dock the Unity and the PMA2 could be attached to the other side of Destiny. The ESP-1 or External Storage Platform 1 was added so that spare parts could be stored. Canada comes into the story with its Canadarm 2 that was added to the Destiny module. It has 7 joints! The Quest Joint Airlock was then added to the Unity module so that spacewalks could be performed. The Russian Pirs was attached between Zarya and Zvezda to allow visiting spacecrafts such as Dragon to dock. 

Image Source - Google | Image by - Reddit | A lego model of the ISS without the truss with a 1:220 scale

The rest part is here...