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Last Updated: Oct 24th, 2006 - 17:24:11 |
CAPE CANAVERAL, United States (AFP) - Launched nearly eight years ago, the International Space Station is an orbiting laboratory that NASA considers crucial to its ambitions to send humans to Mars.
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| View of the International Space Station (ISS) taken from the shuttle Discovery in July. The Atlantis shuttle is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida 27 August on the first ISS assembly mission in nearly four years, as the 2003 Columbia disaster forced NASA to focus on improving safety in the past two shuttle flights(AFP/NASA/File) |
The Atlantis shuttle was scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday on the first ISS assembly mission in nearly four years, as the 2003 Columbia disaster forced NASA to focus on improving safety in the past two shuttle flights.
Orbiting 354 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth, the ISS allows scientists to learn the effects of long-term exposure to zero gravity on humans, information that is needed to prepare for future space exploration missions.
Sixteen nations contribute to the station, including the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Brazil and 11 countries from the European Space Agency.
Racing at 28,000 kilometers (17,500 miles) per hour around Earth, which it circles every 90 minutes, the ISS currently weighs 197 tonnes (434,000 pounds) and will mushroom to a massive, 454-tonne (one-million-pound) structure once it is completed.
The outpost will eventually be about the size of a soccer field, some 110 meters (360 feet) across and 88 meters (290 feet) long, with almost 0.4 hectare (one acre) of solar panels providing electrical power to six laboratories.
The station's first segment, the Zarya control module, was brought to orbit by a Russian Proton rocket in November 1998 to provide the infant station's battery power and fuel storage.
Weeks later, the Space Shuttle Endeavour brought its second element, a unity node serving as a passageway connecting the station's living and work areas.
In October 2000, American astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev arrived in a Soyuz rocket to become the first crew to live and work aboard the orbiting outpost.
Atlantis brought the US Destiny laboratory in February 2001. A major component of the ISS, the research facility's window has been used to take stunning pictures of Earth, and it contains the controls of the station's Canadian-made robotic arm.
In the future, laboratories from Europe, Japan and Russia will be attached to the station.
The Atlantis flight will be the first major ISS construction mission since November 2002, bringing a 16-tonne segment with two huge solar panels.
NASA plans to launch 16 missions to finish construction of the ISS by 2010, when the shuttle fleet is scheduled to be retired.
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