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International Space Station
In 1998, the Russian Zarya module was placed into Earth orbit and became the first element of the International Space Station (ISS). Assembly of the station was completed 13 years later, in 2011. Today, the ISS has a habitable volume of approximately 400 m3 and has been permanently crewed since November 2000. The station’s main purpose is to perform microgravity science experiments. Two examples are Cardiomed, a medical experiment developed by CNES in cooperation with the IMBP (Russia) to gauge the effects of near-weightlessness on the cardiovascular system. it was operated from 2010 to 2020 and its continuation is in preparation, and the DECLIC mini-laboratory also developed by CNES in cooperation with NASA and launched to the ISS in 2009 to observe the behaviour of fluids in certain very precise conditions. As the ISS orbits Earth at an altitude of about 400 km, such experiments allow scientists to detect physical and physiological phenomena otherwise masked by gravity on the ground. In addition to its role performing experiments, the ISS also serves as a platform to observe Earth from space and as a proving ground for future human space exploration.
Launched and led by NASA, the ISS mission was developed and is being pursued in partnership with ESA, the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The ISS will continue operating until at least 2030.
Mission's news feed
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Space Station 20th: astronauts celebrate humans’ home in space
Monday 2 November, 2020 marks 20 years since the first crew took up residence on the International Space Station. Since then, 240 people including 18 ESA astronauts have lived and...
November 2, 2020
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20 years of human research on the International Space Station
As the world celebrates two decades of humans in orbit around Earth on the International Space Station, this month’s science summary will look back not at four weeks of European...
November 2, 2020
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Making waves in space
The Fluidics or "Fluid Dynamics in Space" experiment, developed by CNES and co-funded by Airbus Defense and Space, is probing how fluids behave in weightlessness in the...
September 15, 2020