wunder beta🛰️ What the International Space Station is made of
A 420-tonne machine the length of a football field, bolted together in orbit one piece at a time. Follow the truss, the arrays and the radiators, the arm that walks itself end over end, the laboratories flown up by four space agencies — and
What you’ll learn
- A city assembled in orbitIdentify the truss, the pressurized modules and the nodes, and describe how the station was assembled piece by piece.An exposed 94-metre backbone carries everything outside; sealed rooms joined by hatches hang beneath it; and none of it launched in one piece — it was carried up and bolted together over years, in an order that power and cooling dictated.
- Power, cooling, and a robotic handExplain how the station makes electricity, sheds waste heat, and moves hardware around outside.Eight wings make 75-90 kilowatts and batteries cover the thirty minutes of darkness in every ninety-minute orbit; white radiators throw the resulting heat back out as infrared; and a seven-jointed arm with a hand at each end walks itself to the work.
- International rooms with different jobsCompare Columbus, Kibo, Zvezda and the Cupola, and see what each partner actually contributed.Europe's laboratory and the two Italian-built nodes, Japan's largest-on-station lab with its exposed porch, Russia's segment with its own life support and docking controls, and a seven-window dome that turned out to be a workstation.
- The invisible components that keep people aliveDescribe the oxygen, water and exercise systems that make long stays possible, and what they still cannot close.Electrolysis and a Sabatier reactor turn exhaled carbon dioxide back into breathable air, the water loop now returns 98 per cent, and two hours a day of exercise maintains the only component cargo cannot replace.
Questions this course answers
What is the main job of the ISS truss?
The truss is 94 metres of exposed girder. Almost everything mounted on the outside of the station — power, thermal control, communications and external experiments — attaches to it.
Which piece of the International Space Station was launched first?
Zarya launched on 20 November 1998. Unity followed on 4 December, and a shuttle crew joined the two together on 6 December.
How long has the station had somebody living on it?
The Expedition 1 crew arrived in November 2000, and the station has not been empty since — more than twenty-five years of continuous occupation.
Why does the station need batteries?
The crew sees sixteen sunrises a day, which means the arrays also go dark sixteen times. Batteries charge in the light and carry the station through each night.
Why can't the station cool itself the way a building on Earth does?
Fluid loops carry heat from the cabins and equipment out to white radiator panels on the truss, which radiate it into space as infrared.
What makes Canadarm2 different from a crane?
One end anchors to a power-and-data grapple fixture while the other works; then they swap. That is how a seventeen-metre arm reaches the whole station.
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