18. The International Space Station

Imagine being alive one hundred years ago. World war 1 had just finished. The Spanish Flu was spreading around the world. Cars had only just been invented and were very expensive. The idea of travelling to space or living in a space station was just a dream.

Let’s fast forward to the present day. If you go outside on a clear night and you are lucky you might see the international space station going around the world. This space station is an amazing achievement of humans and I am going to talk about it in today’s blog.

The international space station is the largest space station in orbit so far. If you include the solar panels it is the size of two football fields. There are a lot of facts to know about the international space station so keep reading!

How did they get this GIANT space station into orbit?

The answer to that tricky question is that they took one piece of the space station at a time into orbit using space shuttles and Russian rockets. First, they got the middle part of this giant jigsaw in orbit and then started to move outwards from there. At this rate, it took 10 years to finish the whole thing and took more than 30 rocket missions.

In 2028, the international space station is going to be decommissioned. This means NASA will fire the rockets on the international space station and it will plummet into the atmosphere. It will break up and its pieces will land in the atlantic ocean.

When did they start and when did they finish?

The construction of the international space station began in 1998. In 2010 the international space station celebrated 10 years of having astronauts and cosmonauts on board!

Check out my YouTube video on the space shuttles that were used to take parts up to build the international space station.

Until next time, give me space!

Henry