Today marks the 15th anniversary of that first moving-in day for spacefliers living on the International Space Station – and like many places that have been lived in for 15 years, the ISS is in the midst of renovations.
This isn’t your typical “reno,” however: There’s no other place where the doors have to be replaced while the construction site is moving at 18,000 mph, 225 miles above Earth’s surface. That’s basically what’s involved in getting the station ready for the arrival of Boeing and SpaceX crew transport ships in the 2017 time frame.
“To implement it on orbit is extremely complex, and must be orchestrated very carefully,” John Vollmer, Boeing’s chief engineer for the space station project, says in a video marking the anniversary. Boeing is the prime contractor for the station’s U.S. segment.
The first pieces of the space station were put together in 1998, but it took until Nov. 2, 2000, to get the orbital outpost ready for occupancy. That’s when NASA’s Bill Shepherd and Russia’s Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko moved in to serve as the first live-aboard crew. The station has been occupied ever since, setting the record for continuous orbital habitation. (Shepherd says there are probably still some things “hidden away in various parts of the original modules” that haven’t been found by the crews who followed.)
Today’s station has as much living space as a six-bedroom house (or a Boeing 747), and spreads as wide as a football field when its solar arrays are included. Right now, its occupancy is limited to six spacefliers, because that’s the maximum seating for the two Soyuz lifeboats that are attached to the station. But once Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule and SpaceX’s crew-capable Dragon V2 capsule are flying, the crew complement could go up to seven.
When those commercial crew taxis go into service, it would get America back into the business of launching spacefliers into orbit from U.S. soil for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011. But first, the station’s docking ports have to be remodeled with new equipment designed to accommodate the taxis. That’s going to require sending up two International Docking Adapters, also known as IDAs, and having them installed onto the ports during a complex series of spacewalks.
The first docking adapter was lost in June when a SpaceX resupply mission failed, but NASA is still aiming to have both entryways installed in time for the taxis’ test flights to the station in 2017. Once that’s done, NASA can reduce its reliance on the Russians, who are being paid more than $70 million per seat to transport America’s astronauts to and from the station.
The current plan calls for the station to remain in operation until 2024, but there’s a chance that its lifetime will be extended even further. In September, Boeing said it was awarded a five-year, $1.18 billion NASA contract that includes looking into the possibility of keeping the station in service through 2028. That would be 30 years after construction began – matching the space shuttle program’s 30-year run.
#15YearsOnStation! Kids today have never known a time where humans haven’t lived off Earth: https://t.co/gaxGSwUSMl pic.twitter.com/u0pCPCqs8s
— NASA (@NASA) November 2, 2015
For more about the 15-year anniversary, including statements from White House science adviser John Holdren and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, check out NASA’s “Station15” special report. And while you’re at it, make your plans to spot the station: If the weather’s clear, you should be able to see it in the skies above Seattle starting Thursday.
