ISS Milestone: 10 Images From 100,000 Orbits
The International Space Station, which has been continuously occupied for more than 15 years, recently celebrated its 100,000th orbit around the Earth. Here's a look back at the history of the ISS in pictures to help mark this milestone.
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The International Space Station (ISS) completed its 100,000th orbit earlier this month. This significant moment comes after its first component, the Zarya cargo module, launched in November 1998. The ISS has been continuously occupied for more than 15 years, since its initial assembly, and after that, the arrival of Expedition 1 in November 2000.
The milestone means the ISS has now traveled more than 2.6 billion miles, nearly the distance from Earth to Neptune or 10 round trips from Mars to Earth.
Orbiting the Earth at a height of 250 miles, the ISS is the result of intense collaboration between the space agencies of the US, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada, bringing together international crews, many launch vehicles, communications networks, and globally distributed facilities for launch, operations, training, engineering, and development -- to say nothing of the international scientific research community.
The largest space station ever constructed, the ISS continues to be assembled in orbit. It has been visited by astronauts from 15 countries -- and counting.
In addition to serving as a microgravity and space-environment research laboratory, where crew members conduct experiments in animal, plant, and human biology; physics; astronomy; meteorology; and other fields, ISS is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars.
[Read how several space agencies, including NASA, are planning Mars missions.]
The ISS is actually visible to the naked eye as a slow-moving, bright white dot -- due to reflected sunlight bouncing off the station. It can be seen in the hours, after sunset and before sunrise, when the station remains sunlit, but the ground and sky are dark.
NASA even provides a finder, "Spot the Station," which gives space fans a list of upcoming space station sighting opportunities for their location. So, while most of us won't get all the way up there, we can still keep tabs on the talented and brave men and women circling high above, expanding our knowledge of the universe.
To help mark this milestone in the history of ISS, InformationWeek presents 10 images of the ISS that give you the best view of the station's mission from here on Earth.
(All images courtesy of NASA)
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The suite of cubesats deployed from the ISS will provide Earth observations, improve commercial-ship-tracking, and provide weather data on the Earth's seas. A total of 17 cubesats have been released from a small satellite deployer on the outside of the Kibo experiment module's airlock.
NASA and its international partners completed the initial assembly of the ISS in the fall of 2011. Now, science has taken center stage, as engineers at the space agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manage science operations and help keep science facilities operational.
The ISS's robotic arm, Canadarm2, is visible over Earth in this November 2015 photograph. On Dec. 6, Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren operated the Canadarm2 from inside the station's cupola, using the arm for the rendezvous and grapple of Orbital ATK's Cygnus commercial cargo craft.
On Nov. 6, 2015, NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren spent seven hours and 48 minutes working outside the International Space Station on the 190th spacewalk in support of station assembly and maintenance. The astronauts restored the port truss (P6) ammonia cooling system to its original configuration, the main task for the spacewalk.
Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA captured this brightly lit night image of the city of Chicago on April 5 of this year from the ISS, showing the city's rectilinear grid pattern and the dark watery void of Lake Michigan at the top of the photo. A pink-colored cloud obscures the city's downtown Loop office district.
Astronauts aboard the ISS conduct a spacewalk to construct the Integrated Truss Structure (ITS) over New Zealand in 2002. The truss acts as the junction from which external utilities are routed to the ISS's pressurized modules, including power, data, video and ammonia for the Active Thermal Control System. The truss also provides a mounting point for electronic equipment.
This shot from November 2007 shows astronaut Scott Parazynski repairing a US Solar array, which damaged itself when unfolding. NASA initially halted the deployment of the solar array wing to evaluate the damage, which was discovered when deployment was at about 75% complete, with 25 of 31 bays deployed.
Astronauts aboard the ISS see the world at night on every orbit -- that's 16 times each crew day. An astronaut took this broad, short-lens photograph of Earth's night lights while looking out over the remote reaches of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean.
The ISS was slowly assembled over a decade of spaceflights and crews. This photo, taken in September 2006, shows the space station with its second pair of 240-foot solar wings, attached to a new 17.5-ton section of truss with batteries, electronics, and a giant rotating joint.
The Expedition 47 crew poses for the 3 millionth image taken in April aboard the ISS. In the photo are: (back row from left) Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin, along with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, and (front row from left) European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake, NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
The Expedition 47 crew poses for the 3 millionth image taken in April aboard the ISS. In the photo are: (back row from left) Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin, along with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, and (front row from left) European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake, NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
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