ISS achieves endurance milestones. Photo credit/NASA
The U. S.-led International Space Station is on the brink of achieving a pair of momentous milestones.
On Saturday, the 15-nation station partnership will set a new record for a continuous human presence in space, snapping the 3,644 days logged by Russia’s former Mir station.
Then on Nov. 2, the ISS will mark a decade of continuous human presence. NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd, serving as the commander, joined Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yury Gidzenko as they floated aboard on Nov. 2, 2000, to become the first tenants.
The orbiting laboratory has been staffed continuously ever since.
So far, 196 different people from 15 nations have visited the station. NASA astronaut Mike Lopez-Alegria carried out the longest voyage to the station, 215 days, in 2006 and 2007.
The efforts of the astronauts and cosmonauts to assemble the high altitude lab have required 150 spacewalks.
Currently, the station is hosting its 25th expedition, a six-member crew that includes three Americans and three Russians.
The station has been occupied by at least two people, one Russian and one American, at all times. The orbital outpost’s population fell that low in the months following the 2003 Columbia tragedy, which grounded the shuttle for 2.5 years.
The crew reached its peak of six crew members in May 2009, featuring a a line up that included astronauts from all five of the major partners, the European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies as well as those of the United States and Russia.
As Nov. 2 approaches, the space station will have circled the Earth more than 68,000 times or traveled the equivalent of 1.5 billion miles. That’s nearly equal to a trip to the moon and back each day.
During the anniversary, the current crew commanded by NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock will be awaiting the arrival of the shuttle Discovery with a crew of six more astronauts delivering the last U. S. segment of the station, a large storage compartment. Discovery’s will mark the 35th shuttle mission to the outpost.
The station’s 12-year assembly period is scheduled to conclude in late February and early March, with the delivery of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an external astronomical observatory, aboard the shuttle Endeavour.
The outpost spans a distance of 357 feet and has as much internal volume as a typical five-bedroom home.
It’s taken 103 rocket launches so far by Russia, the United States, Europe and Japan to assemble, re-supply and transport astronauts to and from the station.
U. S. lawmakers recently authorized a plan to extend the station’s orbital life from 2016 to at least 2020. Engineers believe it can operate for at least eight years beyond that.
Construction of Russia’s Mir began in 1986. Mir was propelled into the Pacific Ocean in 2001, when Russia was unable to both sustain the aging outpost and support the new ISS.