40 Amazing Facts About International Space Station | Amazing Facts 4U
- The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station in low Earth orbit. It is a modular structure whose first component was launched in 1998. It is now the largest artificial body in orbit often seen with the naked eye from Earth.
- Russia launched Zarya atop a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Two weeks later, NASA launched Unity. Those were the two first modules of the International Space Station.
- The amazing fact is that it took 136 space flights on seven different types of launch vehicles to build it.
- It weighs an amazing 1 million pounds including visiting spacecraft.
- It has a complete surface area the size of a US football field.
- It has more livable space than a 6-bedroom house.
- It has two bathrooms, a gymnasium, and a 360-degree bay window.
- It has 8 miles of wire just to connect the electrical power system.
- All its research experiments and spacecraft systems are housed in a bit more than one hundred telephone-booth-sized racks.
- The station is divided into two sections, the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) and the United States Orbital Segment (USOS). It has been built at the cost of 150 billion USD most of the components by Boeing.
- The International Space Station (ISS) is the most expensive single object ever built by mankind. Roughly half of the total price was contributed by the USA. The other 15 contributor nations are Canada, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
- The International Space Station (ISS) Solar Array Length is about 240 feet (73 meters).
- There have been 180 spacewalks conducted in support of space station assembly, totaling almost 1,130 hours.
- The International Space Station (ISS) maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 km (205 miles) and 435 km (270 miles) by means of reboost maneuvers.
- The average speed of ISS is about 27,750 km/hour i.e. About 7.7 km/Second. 52 computers control the systems on the ISS.
- Main U.S. control computers have 1.5 gigabytes of total main hard drive storage in the U.S. segment compared to modern PCs which commonly have 500 gigabyte hard drives.
- The International Space Station (ISS) has been continuously occupied by astronauts since 2 November 2000.
- there have been 151 launches to the space station: 98 Russian vehicles, 37 space shuttles, seven U.S. commercial vehicles, five European vehicles, and four Japanese vehicles.
- The International Space Station (ISS) serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory for the crew to conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars.
- It has been visited by 214 astronauts and cosmonauts from 15 different nations.
- International Space Station (ISS) has more than 100,000 people working for space agencies and more than 500 contractor facilities in 37 US states and 16 countries. 68 countries have been involved in the research onboard the station.
- After the U.S. Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, Soyuz rockets became the only provider of transport for astronauts at the International Space Station.
- The amazing Fact is that astronauts aboard the ISS see 15 sunrises and 15 sunsets a day, averaging about one every 45 minutes.
- Amazingly there is a gun kept in ISS belonging to Russians to protect themselves against bears in case their capsule lands off-course on reentry into the earth.
- The amazing fact is that Pizza Hut once made a delivery to ISS in 2001 paying the Russians $1 million to transport the Pizza and advertise it commercially.
- The fact is that NASA has a service texting you whenever ISS passes overhead if you register your mobile number.
- There are “oxygen candles” that are used aboard the ISS. When ignited can provide enough oxygen for one person for 24 hours.
- The amazing Fact is that there was a science fiction movie filmed in space aboard the ISS in 2008 called “Apogee of Fear”. It has never been released publicly.
- There exists a small memory device inside the International Space Station that contains the digitized DNA of Stephen Hawking, Stephen Colbert, and Playboy model Jo Garcia. It is called the Immortality’
- Astronauts have a patch of Velcro inside their helmets so that they can scratch their noses when needed.
- Amazingly American astronauts on the ISS can vote in elections from orbit by secure email.
- In 2007, astronaut Sunita Williams ran an entire marathon onboard the International Space Station, simultaneously with the Boston Marathon, that her sister and a fellow astronaut were running in
- In 2009, Stephen Colbert won a NASA competition to have a module of the ISS named after him, but NASA opted to name it ‘Tranquility’ instead. They did, however, name a treadmill on the ISS after him. It is called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (C.O.L.B.E.R.T.)
- Astronauts in the ISS “do their laundry” by having new clothes shipped to them in an unmanned spacecraft that then has the old clothes put into it and is burnt up upon reentry.
- The amazing Fact is that some of the shooting stars we see are actually astronaut poop burning up in the atmosphere.
- The spacewalks can cause astronauts’ fingernails to fall off due to the current glove design.
- U.S. and Russian astronauts on the ISS have a separate system of water supply. While the U.S. water uses iodine for bacteria control, the Russian water uses silver. If these substances mix, silver-iodine precipitate forms in the water, which may clog the sublimator in the NASA EMU spacesuit.
- Astronauts must have good airflow around them when they sleep, otherwise, they could wake up oxygen-deprived and gasping for air because a bubble of their own exhaled carbon dioxide would have formed around their heads.
- Astronauts can’t cry in space. Amazingly because of the weightless environment, the tears just collect in little balls and sting your eyes.
- An interesting fact is that without gravity to pull fluids down, astronauts’ sinuses get clogged up and they can’t really taste much of anything.
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