Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)

   Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Indian space agency, founded in 1969 to develop an independent Indian space program. Its headquarters are in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Its chief executive is a chairman, who is also chairman of the Indian government’s Space Commission and the secretary of the Department of Space.

   The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) operates through a countrywide network of centres. Sensors and payloads are developed at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad. Satellites are designed, developed, assembled, and tested at the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore. Launch vehicles are developed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. Launches take place at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island, near Chennai. The Master Control Facilities for geostationary satellite station keeping are located at Hassan and Bhopal. Reception and processing facilities for remote-sensing data are at the National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad. ISRO’s commercial arm is Antrix Corporation, which has its headquarters in Bangalore.

   ISRO’s first satellite, Aryabhata, was launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1975. Rohini, the first satellite to be placed in orbit by an Indian-made launch vehicle (the Satellite Launch Vehicle 3), was launched on July 18, 1980. ISRO has launched several space systems, including the Indian National Satellite (INSAT) system for telecommunication, television broadcasting, meteorology, and disaster warning and the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites for resource monitoring and management. The first INSAT was launched in 1988, and the program expanded to include geosynchronous satellites called GSAT. The first IRS satellite was also launched in 1988, and the program developed more-specialized satellites, including the Radar Imaging Satellite-1 (RISAT-1, launched in 2012) and the 

   Satellite with Argos and Altika (SARAL, launched in 2013), a joint Indian-French mission that measures ocean wave heights. ISRO subsequently developed three other rockets: the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for putting satellites into polar orbit, the Geostationary Space Launch Vehicle (GSLV) for placing satellites into geostationary orbit, and a heavy-lift version of the GSLV called the GSLV Mark III or LVM. Those rockets launched communications satellites, Earth-observation satellites, and, in 2008, Chandrayaan-1, India’s first mission to the Moon. ISRO plans to put astronauts into orbit in 2021.

A better way to learn if alien planets have the right stuff

A new method for analyzing the chemical composition of stars may help scientists winnow the search for Earth 2.0.

Yale University researchers Debra Fischer and John Michael Brewer, in a new study that will appear in the Astrophysical Journal, describe a computational modeling technique that gives a clearer sense of the chemistry of stars, revealing the conditions present when their planets formed. The system creates a new way to assess the habitability and biological evolution possibilities of planets outside our solar system.

"This is a very useful, easy diagnostic to tell whether that pale blue dot you see is more similar to Venus or the Earth," said Fischer, a Yale professor of astronomy. "Our field is very focused on finding Earth 2.0, and anything we can do to narrow the search is helpful."

Lead author Brewer, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale, has used the technique previously to determine temperature, surface gravity, rotational speed, and chemical composition information for 1,600 stars, based on 15 elements found within those stars. The new study looks at roughly 800 stars, focusing on their ratio of carbon to oxygen, and magnesium to silicon.

Brewer explained that understanding the makeup of stars helps researchers understand the planets in orbit around them. "We're getting a look at the primordial materials that made these planets," he said. "Knowing what materials they started with leads to so much else."

For instance, the new study shows that in many cases, carbon isn't the driving force in planetary composition. Brewer found that if a star has a carbon/oxygen ratio similar to or lower than that of our own Sun, its planets have mineralogy dominated by the magnesium/silicon ratio. About 60% of the stars in the study have magnesium/silicon ratios that would produce Earth-like compositions; 40% of the stars have silicate-heavy interiors.

"This will have a profound impact on determining habitability," Brewer said. "It will help us make better inferences about which planets will be ones where life like ours can form."

In addition to helping identify planets more like Earth, the study sheds light on the occurrence of "diamond" planets—planets with a high carbon-to-oxygen abundance. Brewer and Fischer found that it is "exceedingly rare" to find a star with a carbon/oxygen ratio high enough to produce a diamond planet. In fact, the new data reveals that the star of the much discussed diamond planet, 55 Cancri e, does not have a high enough carbon/oxygen ratio to support its nickname.

"They're even more rare than we thought a few years ago," Fischer said. "Diamond planets truly are the most precious."

Small troughs growing on Mars may become 'spiders'

Erosion-carved troughs that grow and branch during multiple Martian years may be infant versions of larger features known as Martian "spiders," which are radially patterned channels found only in the south polar region of Mars.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-small-troughs-mars-spiders.html#jCp

Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) report the first detection of cumulative growth, from one Martian spring to another, of channels resulting from the same thawing-carbon-dioxide process believed to form the spider-like features.

The spiders range in size from tens to hundreds of yards (or meters). Multiple channels typically converge at a central pit, resembling the legs and body of a spider. For the past decade, researchers have checked in vain with MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to see year-to-year changes in them.

"We have seen for the first time these smaller features that survive and extend from year to year, and this is how the larger spiders get started," said Ganna Portyankina of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "These are in sand-dune areas, so we don't know whether they will keep getting bigger or will disappear under moving sand."

Dunes appear to be a factor in how the baby spiders form, but they may also keep many from persisting through the centuries needed to become full-scale spiders. The amount of erosion needed to sculpt a typical spider, at the rate determined from observing active growth of these smaller troughs, would require more than a thousand Martian years. That is according to an estimate by Portyankina and co-authors in a recent paper in the journal Icarus. One Martian year lasts about 1.9 Earth years.

"Much of Mars looks like Utah if you stripped away all vegetation, but 'spiders' are a uniquely Martian landform," said Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, a co-author of the report.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-small-troughs-mars-spiders.html#jCp

Carbon-dioxide ice, better known as "dry ice," does not occur naturally on Earth. On Mars, sheets of it cover the ground during winter in areas near both poles, including the south-polar regions with spidery terrain. Dark fans appear in these areas each spring.

Hugh Kieffer of the Space Science Institute in Boulder put those factors together in 2007 to deduce the process linking them: Spring sunshine penetrates the ice to warm the ground underneath, causing some carbon dioxide on the bottom of the sheet to thaw into gas. The trapped gas builds pressure until a crack forms in the ice sheet. Gas erupts out, and gas beneath the ice rushes toward the vent, picking up particles of sand and dust. This erodes the ground and also supplies the geyser with particles that fall back to the surface, downwind, and appear as the dark spring fans.

\Ball Mill Manufacturer

This explanation has been well accepted, but actually seeing a ground-erosion process that could eventually yield the spider shapes proved elusive. Six years ago, researchers using HiRISE reported small furrows appearing on sand dunes near Mars' north pole at sites where eruptions through dry ice had deposited spring fans. However, those furrows in the far north disappear within a year, apparently refilled with sand.

The newly reported troughs near the south pole are also at spring-fan sites. They have not only persisted and grown through three Mars years so far, but they also formed branches as they extended. The branching pattern resembles the spidery terrain.

"There are dunes where we see these dendritic [or branching] troughs in the south, but in this area, there is less sand than around the north pole," Portyankina said. "I think the sand is what jump starts the process of carving a channel in the ground."

Harder ground lies beneath the sand. Forming a spider may require ground soft enough to be carved, but not so loose that it refills the channels, as in the north. The new research sheds light on how carbon dioxide shapes Mars in unearthly ways.

MRO began orbiting Mars in 2006. "The combination of very high-resolution imaging and the mission's longevity is enabling us to investigate active processes on Mars that produce detectable changes on time spans of seasons or years," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We keep getting surprises about how dynamic Mars is.
"
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-small-troughs-mars-spiders.html#jCp

Searching a sea of 'noise' to find exoplanets—using only data as a guide

The new approach, outlined in a study published Dec. 20 in The Astronomical Journal, relies on mathematical methods that have their foundations in physics research. Rather than trying to filter out the signal "noise" from stars around which exoplanets are orbiting, Yale scientists studied all of the signal information together to understand the intricacies within its structure.

"It requires nothing but the data itself, which is a game changer," said senior author John Wettlaufer, the A.M. Bateman Professor of Geophysics, Mathematics and Physics at Yale. "Moreover, it allows us to compare our findings with other, traditional approaches and improve whatever modeling assumptions they use."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-sea-noise-exoplanetsusing.html#jCp

The search for exoplanets—planets found outside our own solar system—has increased dramatically in recent years. The effort is motivated, in part, by a desire to discover Earth analogs that might also support life.

Scientists have employed many techniques in this effort, including pulsar timing, direct imaging, and measuring the speed at which stars and galaxies move either toward or away from Earth. Yet each of these techniques, individually or in combination, presents challenges.

Primarily, those challenges have to do with eliminating extraneous data—noise—that doesn't match existing models of how planets are expected to behave. In this traditional interpretation of noise, searches can be hampered by data that obscures or mimics exoplanets.

Wettlaufer and his colleagues decided to look for exoplanets in the same way they had sorted through satellite data to find complex changes in Arctic sea ice. The formal name for the approach is "multi-fractal temporally weighted detrended fluctuation analysis" (MF-TWDFA). It sifts data at all time scales and extracts the underlying processes associated with them.

"A key idea is that events closer in time are more likely to be similar than those farther away in time," Wettlaufer said. "In the case of exoplanets, it is the fluctuations in a star's spectral intensity that we are dealing with."

The use of multi-fractals in science and mathematics was pioneered at Yale by Benoit B. Mandelbrot and Katepalli Sreenivasan. For expertise in the search for exoplanets, the researchers consulted with Yale astrophysicist Debra Fischer, who has pioneered many approaches in the field.

The researchers confirmed the accuracy of their methodology by testing it against observations and simulation data of a known planet orbiting a star in the constellation Vulpecula, approximately 63 light years from Earth.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-sea-noise-exoplanetsusing.html#jCp

Will the Indo-French Collaboration on Space Research Lead to a Lander on Mars

India and France’s collaboration on space research has been symbiotic from the very outset and now spans across Europe, Asia and South America

     Kourou: The Indo-French love affair for rockets spans across Europe, Asia and South America. In far-away French Guiana, at Kourou in South America, housed in the middle of lush green rain forests, is the expansive 700 sq km European space port.

When I reach, I encounter a heartening sight that fills one with national pride as I see the tricolour hoisted alongside the French and EU flags.
Another fact makes me feel at home, is a poster announcing that I am in a zone that houses deadly diseases like dengue and chikungunya to add to the icing it also warns against Zika.
It is here that I find a band of about a dozen Indian aerospace scientists who made a motel their temporary home and were carefully nurturing India’s big bird, the GSAT-18 satellite that was launched on the Ariane-5 rocket last week.
Cooking their own meals of rasam and curd rice, this merry gang kept a vigil on India’s satellite as it rocketed over the Atlantic Ocean.
There is no other country, other than France which has contributed and benefitted the most in partnering with India in the space sector. From helping India in its very first baby rocket launch, way back in 1963 to having launched India’s latest heavy weight communication satellite GSAT-18 on October 6, 2016, the Indo-French connection are deep and strong.

     India and France have made rocket engines together, helped each other learn things that were being denied to one another, have made satellites for each other and more than that both have helped train human resources in this frontier area. Today both countries are recognised as frontline space powers each in their own right.

Not known to many, India even contributed to the making and testing of the mighty Ariane rockets. On the 280th launch of rockets from Kourou and the 74th consecutively successful launch of the massive Ariane-5 rocket, India’s GSAT-18 – a 3404-kg communications satellite that helps the country boost its television and banking services was successfully placed in orbit.

ISRO chairman, A. S. Kiran Kumar, who watched the launch from the Jupiter building of the control centre in Kourou, called it a “glorious and flawless mission and like, on all previous occasions, Arianespace provided a magnificent textbook launch”.

India has had a long association since 1983 with Arianespace and Centre National Detudes Spatiales (CNES) or the French space agency, as Kumar says “This was the 20th launch for ISRO and we have been having a long cooperation with Ariane starting with our Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment (APPLE). At ISRO we have capability of putting only 2.2 tonnes in orbit and we come to Kourou and Ariane for putting higher capacity satellites.”

This 20th launch was only the latest, in early years when the Ariane rocket was still struggling and had suffered back to back failures, it was India that risked putting its APPLE satellite – a 350-kg communications satellite onboard the third launch of the Ariane-1 rocket in 1983.

To be fair, CNES provided India with a free launch and since then the gates for commerce in rocket launching using the Ariane family of rockets have not closed. In 2017, India hopes to launch another two heavy duty communication satellites GSAT-17 and GSAT-11 using the trusted Ariane-5 rocket.

In 1963, when ISRO was not yet born, India launched its first sounding rocket from Thumba, a Nike Apache rocket given by the Americans, but even in this first launch the French link was evident as the payload of the sodium vapour experiment was provided by France.

Legendary French aerospace scientist, Jacques Blamont, was present on November 21, 1963 in the fishing village of Thumba, in Kerala who says he “had no difficulty convincing CNES to provide a radar for tracking and the sodium payloads to be placed first on the first sounding rocket”.

Blamont recalls that “a young engineer was sent the night before to fit the payload and nose cone, he later became the president of India in A. P. J. Abdul Kalam”.

One of ISRO’s workhorse liquid fuelled rocket engines is the Vikas motor, that still flies on both the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), also has its origins in France.

According to Blamont, “For India, the really major breakthrough in liquid propulsion systems came in 1974 when ISRO signed an agreement with the Societe Europeenne de Propulsion (SEP) located in Vernon, France.

     “At that time the French were developing the Viking liquid engine for their Ariane launch vehicle programme. Without any exchange of funds, this agreement provided for technology transfer from SEP to ISRO for the Viking liquid engine. In return, ISRO would spare the services of 100 man-years of ISRO engineers and scientists to SEP for their Ariane launch vehicle development. Forty engineers, with a 5 years contract, participated in the technology acquisition programme in France.”

This is the real beginning of the success story of the Indian and French rockets.

In more recent times, India has launched some of Europe’s sharpest eyes in the skies in the form of Spot-6 and Spot-7 satellites a few years ago.

That the French relied on India’s highly reliable PSLV launcher shows how the two countries trust each-others’ capabilities.

In more recent times, the two jointly made a satellite dedicated to study the water cycle on Earth called Megha Tropiques.

This is a 1,000-kg earth imaging satellite and was launched using the PSLV in 2011. Just last week ISRO and CNES inked a new understanding to jointly continue with the mission for another four years.

According to Mathieu Weiss, the CNES representative in India, “the mission has already given rise to some 90 published scientific articles and more than 1,400 citations.”

Weiss adds that the mission is delivering a dynamic three-dimensional picture of different states of water in the atmosphere. The main feature of the satellite is the combination of its instruments and its position over the inter-tropical belt, in a low-inclination orbit enabling up to five revisits to the same location every day.

This unique capability has allowed it to achieve remarkable progress in estimating rainfall and forecasting cyclones, monsoons and droughts. Continuous monitoring of the turbulent giant tropical convection spots, where most extreme weather phenomena form, provides a better understanding of the cycles affecting mid-latitude countries and is extremely valuable for the global climate science community.

Forging a new partnership, CNES and ISRO have decided to engage in new joint climate missions. The French Argos data-collection instrument will fly on the Indian Oceansat-3 satellite in 2018. France and India have also begun development of a future joint thermal infrared observation satellite.

     “India is one of the best partners and customers for France,” says CNES president, Jean-Yves Le Gall who adds in times to come ISRO and CNES can hopefully jointly explore planets like Venus and Mars where India is already planning missions.

Blamont wants India and France to jointly launch an orbiter to Venus that will then send balloons down into the little understood atmosphere of the Venus.

“After India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, the next step has to be a lander. A lander on Mars is not easy, but it will be interesting to undertake,” says Le Gall.

Earlier this year on India’s republic day, at the summit meeting between India and France a letter of intent was indeed inked to explore landing on Mars.

In space technology no frontier is impossible and no dream is too big for India and France as they soar ever higher to decipher the unknowns of the universe, while not forgetting the needs of earthlings.

A Space First: Spaceships From 4 Different Fleets Linked Together

     HOUSTON – When NASA's shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station Saturday (Feb. 26), it made some space history: It marked the first time ever that spaceships from four different space agencies were docked together at the same time.

The historic moment occurred at 2:16 p.m. EST (1916 GMT), when Discovery arrived at a docking port on NASA's Harmony module, a multi-port hub on the space station. The shuttle joined two Russian Soyuz space capsules and three robotic space freighters (from Europe, Japan and Russia) that were also docked to the orbiting lab.

"That that's about as many different visiting vehicles as you can imagine," Discovery astronaut Alvin Drew radioed Mission Control in Houston before the docking.

Truly international space station

     With Discovery's arrival, the space station's mass jumped to 1.2 million pounds (544,310 kilograms). It is as long as a football field, making it the largest man-made structure in space.

     The station is so large that on clear nights it can easily be seen with the unaided eye if you know where to look, and sometimes even rivals the planet Venus in brightness.

The $100 billion International Space Station has been under construction by 15 different countries since 1998. It is currently home to six crewmembers from the U.S., Russia and Italy and has about the same amount of living space as a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

Five different space agencies, representing the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan, are leading the effort. Of those, only the Canadian Space Agency does not have a spacecraft docked at the space station today, although Canada provided the robotic arm and Dextre maintenance robot for the orbiting laboratory. [Photos: Building the International Space Station]

Busy space traffic control

     In the last few weeks, the station has seen a flurry of spaceship arrivals and departures leading up to Discovery's arrival. Here's a look at the busy port in space:
First, an unmanned Japanese cargo craft called the H-2 Transfer Vehicle-2 (HTV-2) arrived at the space station on Jan. 26.
     Astronauts used the station's robotic arm to latch onto the HTV-2 craft, which Japan's space agency named Kounotori 2 ("Kounotori" is Japanese for White Stork), and attached it to the station's multi-port Harmony module. Last week, the station's crew had to move the Japanese craft to a different parking spot because it would have blocked access to Discovery's payload bay
     On Jan. 28 Russian launched its robotic space freighter Progress 41 toward the station. It arrived two days later. An older Russian cargo ship, Progress 40, also undocked from the station to make room for yet another addition: the European Space Agency's second unmanned cargo ship.
     ESA launched its Automated Transfer Vehicle 2, called the ATV-2 Johannes Kepler, on Feb. 16. It arrived at the space station on Thursday (Feb. 24) – the exact same day that Discovery blasted off toward the orbiting lab. [Photos: Shuttle Discovery's Final Mission]
Discovery launched Thursday (Feb. 24) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is Discovery's 39th and final spaceflight before being retired along with the rest of NASA's shuttle program later this year.The shuttle is delivering a new storage room and a humanoid robot, called Robonaut 2, to the International Space Station.
Two Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which carried the six astronauts aboard the station in teams of three, are also linked to the space station.
     "It's a pretty amazing time if you think about it," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, said before Discovery launched. "To think of all these international control stations working together – it's an amazing system of operations and systems to keep all the bits moving forward. What a great time in spaceflight."
The novelty of so many different spacecraft at the International Space Station has not been lost on NASA and its international partners.
     They hope to stage a space photo session by cosmonauts flying around the station in a Soyuz spacecraft if time allows during Discovery's flight.
A final decision has yet to be made, but if allowed, will add an extra day to Discovery's 11-day mission.
     SPACE.com managing editor Tariq Malik (@tariqjmalik) contributed to this report. Follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow.Visit SPACE.com for complete coverage of Discovery's final mission STS-133.

International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking

The International Space Station (ISS) is the most complex international scientific and engineering project in history and the largest structure humans have ever put into space. This high-flying satellite is a laboratory for new technologies and an observation platform for astronomical, environmental and geological research. As a permanently occupied outpost in outer space, it serves as a stepping-stone for further space exploration. This includes Mars, which NASA is now stating is its goal for human space exploration.

The space station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph). In one day, the station travels about the distance it would take to go from Earth to the moon and back. The space station can rival the brilliant planet Venus in brightness and appears as a bright moving light across the night sky. It can be seen from Earth without the use of a telescope by night sky observers who know when and where to look. You can use our Satellite Tracker page powered by N2YO.com to find out when to see the space station.

Five different space agencies representing 15 countries built the $100-billion International Space Station and continue to operate it today. NASA, Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos), the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are the primary space agency partners on the project.

Structure

The International Space Station was taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually built in orbit.It consists of modules and connecting nodes that contain living quarters and laboratories, as well as exterior trusses that provide structural support, and solar panels that provide power. The first module, Russia's Zarya module, launched in 1998. The station has been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.

[Infographic: The International Space Station: Inside and Out]

Starting in 2015, changes to the ISS were performed to prepare the complex for crewed commercial spacecraft, which will begin arriving as early as 2017. Two international docking adapters will be added to the station. Additionally, an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace is scheduled to arrive in 2016.

Current plans call for the space station to be operated through at least 2020. NASA has requested an extension until 2024. Discussions to extend the space station's lifetime are ongoing among all international partners; several countries, such as Canada, Russia and Japan, have expressed their support for extending the station's operations.

During the space station's major construction phase, some Russian modules and docking ports were launched directly to the orbiting lab, while other NASA and international components (including Russian hardware) were delivered on U.S. space shuttles. [Rare Photos: Space Shuttle at Space Station]

How big is the International Space Station?

The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs 861,804 lbs. (391,000 kilograms), not including visiting vehicles. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional five-bedroom house, and has two bathrooms, gym facilities and a 360-degree bay window. Astronauts have also compared the space station's living space to the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo j

The International Space Station (ISS) is the most complex international scientific and engineering project in history and the largest structure humans have ever put into space. This high-flying satellite is a laboratory for new technologies and an observation platform for astronomical, environmental and geological research. As a permanently occupied outpost in outer space, it serves as a stepping-stone for further space exploration. This includes Mars, which NASA is now stating is its goal for human space exploration.

The space station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph). In one day, the station travels about the distance it would take to go from Earth to the moon and back. The space station can rival the brilliant planet Venus in brightness and appears as a bright moving light across the night sky. It can be seen from Earth without the use of a telescope by night sky observers who know when and where to look. You can use our Satellite Tracker page powered by N2YO.com to find out when to see the space station.

Five different space agencies representing 15 countries built the $100-billion International Space Station and continue to operate it today. NASA, Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos), the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are the primary space agency partners on the project.

Structure

The International Space Station was taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually built in orbit. It consists of modules and connecting nodes that contain living quarters and laboratories, as well as exterior trusses that provide structural support, and solar panels that provide power. The first module, Russia's Zarya module, launched in 1998. The station has been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.

[Infographic: The International Space Station: Inside and Out]

Starting in 2015, changes to the ISS were performed to prepare the complex for crewed commercial spacecraft, which will begin arriving as early as 2017. Two international docking adapters will be added to the station. Additionally, an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace is scheduled to arrive in 2016.

Current plans call for the space station to be operated through at least 2020. NASA has requested an extension until 2024. Discussions to extend the space station's lifetime are ongoing among all international partners; several countries, such as Canada, Russia and Japan, have expressed their support for extending the station's operations.

During the space station's major construction phase, some Russian modules and docking ports were launched directly to the orbiting lab, while other NASA and international components (including Russian hardware) were delivered on U.S. space shuttles. [Rare Photos: Space Shuttle at Space Station]

How big is the International Space Station?

The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs 861,804 lbs. (391,000 kilograms), not including visiting vehicles. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional five-bedroom house, and has two bathrooms, gym facilities and a 360-degree bay window. Astronauts have also compared the space station's living space to the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

Crew size

A six-person expedition crew typically stays four to six months aboard the ISS. The first space station crews were three-person teams, though after the tragic Columbia shuttle disaster the crew size temporarily dropped to two-person teams. The space station reached its full six-person crew size in 2009 as new modules, laboratories and facilities were brought online.

Also in 2009, the record for the largest gathering in space was set during NASA's STS-127 shuttle mission aboard Endeavour. When Endeavour docked with the International Space Station, the shuttle's seven-person crew went aboard the orbiting lab, joining the six spaceflyers already there. The 13-person party was the largest-ever gathering of people in space at the same time. While subsequent NASA shuttle and station crews matched the 13-person record, it has never been topped. [Related: The Most Extreme Human Spaceflight Records]

With a full complement of six crewmembers, the station operates as a full research facility. In recent years, technology such as 3-D printing, autonomous Earth imaging, laser communications and mini-satellite launchers have been added to the station; some are controlled by crewmembers, and some controlled by the ground. Additionally, there are dozens of ongoing investigations looking at the health of astronauts staying on the station for several months. [Related: Weightlessness and Its Effect on Astronauts]

With a full complement of six crewmembers, the station operates as a full research facility. In recent years, technology such as 3-D printing, autonomous Earth imaging, laser communications and mini-satellite launchers have been added to the station; some are controlled by crewmembers, and some controlled by the ground. Additionally, there are dozens of ongoing investigations looking at the health of astronauts staying on the station for several months. [Related: Weightlessness and Its Effect on Astronauts]

Crews are not only responsible for science, but also for maintaining the station. Sometimes, this requires that they venture on spacewalks to perform repairs. From time to time, these repairs can be urgent — such as when a part of the ammonia system fails, which has happened a couple of times.
Spacewalk safety procedures were changed after a potentially deadly 2013 incident when astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet filled with water while he was working outside the station. NASA now responds quickly to “water incursion” incidents. It also has added pads to the spacesuits to soak up the liquid, and a tube to provide an alternate breathing location should the helmet fill with water. NASA is also testing technology that could supplement or replace astronaut spacewalks. One example is Robonaut. A prototype currently on board the station is able to flip switches and do other routine tasks under supervision, and may be modified at some point to work “outside” as well. [Infographic: Meet Robonaut 2, NASA's Space Droid]