The ISS celebrates its 15 years of human habitation in space this November 2. (Photo : NASA)
The International Space Station celebrated its 15th year in space on Monday, November 2 as the orbiting space laboratory continues to house humans, marking a milestone for human habitation in space.
NASA along with the space agency's international partners celebrated this glorious event on mission ground control along with the six astronauts who are part of the current crew aboard the ISS. To celebrate, the crew members who are American, Japanese and Russian astronauts, held a special space dinner which is the 26,500th meal whipped up in microgravity.
At the ISS, human presence has graced the space station ever since launching Expedition 1, totaling in 5,378 days of human space habitation and still continuing. NASA also announced that the ISS already expanded its areas starting from three rooms to 15 rooms since 2000.
Today, the ISS weighs a mass of exactly 1 million pounds with a pressure volume equivalent to a Boeing 747 jet plane. NASA also reveals that the total number of experiments that were carried out in the space laboratory would equal to more than 1,760.
When it comes to astronauts conducting spacewalks, a total of 189 have already been set out to build and maintain the global space outpost since 1998. On November 6, Friday, the 190th spacewalk will be scheduled where astronauts Scot Kelly and Kjell Lindgren will venture out again in space.
The U.S. space agency plans to keep the space lab in working condition until 2023 where more maintenance work is necessary as the ISS begins to show its age. Since the first expedition crew, many humans have passed through, lived in microgravity and left the ISS, totalling to 220 astronauts from 17 different nations.
The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren congratulates NASA and the entire ISS team and astronauts, as this collaboration with many international partners is necessary in keeping the iSS running and it is also a remarkable sign of the outstanding capabilities of humanity if nations work together in a peaceful manner.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden also said that since the launch of the ISS in 2000, humans have been successfully inhabiting the space lab where the crew that has been working hard outside Earth, continuing to enhance scientific understanding about space. He adds that the ISS crew is always pushing innovative technology to help humans and robotics engage in long term space research and exploration.
