International Space Station

Assembled from 13 blocks · 2 evidence · 7 related

1. Story
2. The orbiting laboratory assembled from 1998, when the Zarya module launched, and continuously inhabited since the arrival of the Expedition 1 crew in November 2000. It is the only sustained microgravity research platform available to commercial users, which makes it the physical precondition for every in-space manufacturing business that currently exists: a company with a process to test has essentially one place to test it. Access is brokered through the ISS National Laboratory for the United States allocation and through agency agreements elsewhere. Its retirement is a scheduled economic event rather than a distant possibility — the partner agencies have committed to operations to 2030, and NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in June 2024 to build a United States Deorbit Vehicle to bring the structure down in a controlled re-entry afterwards. Several commercially owned stations have been proposed to succeed it, and whether any is flying before the station comes down is the central open question for the microgravity research market. Its orbit is inclined 51.6 degrees and it circles the Earth roughly every ninety minutes, so it has no fixed terrestrial position.
3. Knowledge
4. International Space Station
5. Connections
6. In-space manufacturing
7. The first paying private visitor reaches the International Space Station
8. A Russian anti-satellite test destroys Cosmos 1408
9. NASA contracts for a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station
10. International Space Station operations are planned to end
11. Evidence
12. Sets out the plan to operate the International Space Station to 2030, to transition low-Earth-orbit human spaceflight to commercially owned destinations, and to conduct a controlled deorbit at end of life. V55 verification basis: nasa.gov was not retrievable in this session; the report's publication year is not stated here because it was not confirmed.
13. Records that NASA selected SpaceX to develop the vehicle that will perform the controlled deorbit of the International Space Station. V55 verification basis: the announcement was not retrieved in this session; the contract value is not quoted here for that reason.