We might not be living on Mars or the Moon yet, but at least we know living in space is possible, thanks to NASA’s space station.
Ten years ago, a crew first settled on the International Space Station and just over a week ago, the station surpassed the Russian Mir Space Station’s record for longest continually inhabited spacecraft.
The first commander to live on the space station, Bill Shepherd, once explained that a tea, working on the station provides “access to the space environment where we hope we can do very interesting and productive research.”
While the station had originally been planned to be decommissioned in 2016, President Obama has given the ISS a new lease of life with an aim to keep the space station up above us all to at least 2020.
“The ISS represents an incredible international engineering accomplishment,” says NASA chief astronaut Peggy Whitson. “To have constructed something on orbit greater than a football field in length, with more internal pressurised volume than a 747, with parts and pieces and participation from 15 countries around the world, full-time 24-hour/7 day a week operations and human presence for 10 years, fills me with an incredible sense of pride in what our organisation can accomplish.”
