Global Space Station Celebrates 15 Years of Occupancy

William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko were the first to call the ISS home, but in the years following their pioneering stint in space, no fewer than 372 spaceflights have carried a staggering 217 astronauts to the orbital science station.

Kjell N. Lingren: “A lot of those our critical to our understanding of how human physiology adapts to this micro-gravity environment and the things that we need to do to protect human health for a long trip to Mars with respect to muscle, bone, immune system and radiation health as well.” . It’s helping humanity make it to MarsThe ISS helps scientists explore several topics they want to have down before they send anyone to Mars, such as the effects of long-term space travel on astronauts and what communication with the crew would be like. McClelland, for instance, claims that while monitoring a NASA mission in the 1990s, he saw a 9-foot humanoid alien with two tethered USA astronauts in the Space Shuttle Payload Bay. “It would be fantastic to have researchers of all different flavors, and many different people be able to go to the space station and do their research, and also for people to go there just to experience the majesty of space and looking out at the Earth, and the privilege that we have up here to do that”. Shrimp cocktail and macaroni & cheese are among the favorites. It was a thrill connecting in real-time with our astronauts who are living, working, and carrying out research in a laboratory orbiting 250 miles above us every 90 minutes.

According to Kelly, the most important experiment on the station is the ongoing investigation into how spaceflight affects human physiology and psychology.

“You can see the way the human body acts in space is completely different in many different ways”. As the one-year crew, Kelly and Kornienko will return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-18M in March 2016. NASA reports that the ISS has seen over 1,760 experiments and 189 spacewalks to construct and maintain the exterior of the station.

Aside from the achievement of the longest continuous human presence in space, the ISS is also a pretty remarkable diplomatic feat.

“The space station really is a bridge”, said Lindgren. President Ronald Reagan wanted to name it “Freedom”, but that name didn’t take, Parts of the space station have names, Zarya, Kibo, Destiny, Harmony and Columbus, but the entire assembly is just the plain old clunky wordy “International Space Station”.

“I congratulate all of the men and women at NASA and around the world who have worked so hard to keep the global Space Station operational these past 15 years”, Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in the statement.

On Thursday, Commander Scott Kelly broke the record for longest consecutive amount of time in space by an American astronaut, The Verge reports.

“I was watching the space station live cam when I noticed the camera switch to a new camera”.