The International Space Station
An incredible human adventure
The combined effort of the Nations, in space
The International Space Station is the most ambitious project ever undertaken by man for extended stays in space and scientific experiments into Weightlessness" >weightlessness*!
Initiated in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States, the project gathered the European Space Agency in 1985, and through it 10 European states, before being joined by Canada, Japan and Russia in 1993 and Brazil in 1997. So the station is true cosmopolitan jigsaw puzzle!
A giant satellite
The Station circles Earth at about 28,000 km/h, at an altitude of 386 km. But several aspects mark it out from an ordinary satellite. First of all, it is manned. Then it was built in stages, from the first module put into orbit in 1998 until the last one expected in 2010. When complete it will weigh about 500 tons, be the size of a football pitch and use the electricity of the equivalent of 25 flats. Nothing much to look at, Spot!
A building site above our heads
Since 1998 many missions have already brought a hundred items up above our heads! In all, 70 missions will be needed to complete this giant Rubicube. The American shuttle*, the Russian Proton* and Soyuz* rockets, Ariane 5* and the Japanese launchers take it in turns to take up there everything to be able to live like down here…
