International Space Station

The International Space Station is a crewed research laboratory in low Earth orbit, jointly operated by space agencies from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Low Earth orbit: The region of space around Earth extending to roughly 2,000 kilometers in altitude. The station circles Earth within this orbital region, where crewed missions remain comparatively accessible.
Space Station Freedom: A proposed NASA-led space station whose plans evolved into the International Space Station. Its redesign and international partnerships supplied the station’s early framework.
Microgravity: A condition in which apparent weight is very small because objects and their surroundings are in near-continuous free fall. The station’s free-fall environment enables experiments unlike those conducted on Earth.
Expedition 1: The first long-duration crew to live aboard the International Space Station, arriving in November 2000. Its arrival began continuous human occupation of the station.
Long-duration spaceflight: Human space missions lasting long enough to expose crews to sustained weightlessness, isolation, and space radiation. The station enabled repeated study of human adaptation during months in orbit.
Orbital mechanics: The branch of mechanics that describes the motion of objects under gravity. Orbital mechanics determines the station’s trajectory, rendezvous, and altitude changes.
Mir: The Soviet and Russian space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001. Experience aboard Mir informed long-duration operations and later station cooperation.
Space biology: The study of how living organisms function and change in spaceflight conditions. Station experiments examine how microgravity and radiation affect organisms over time.
Sergei Krikalev: A Russian cosmonaut who served on the first International Space Station expedition and multiple later missions. He helped establish the station’s first sustained crew operations.
Astronaut health in space: The study and management of health effects caused by the spaceflight environment. Station crews have provided evidence on physiological changes during extended missions.

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