Extract from ABC News
NASA astronaut Chris Williams (right) and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev ahead of their journey to the ISS next week. (Reuters: Roscosmos/handout)
On a chilly winter's day on the Kazakh Steppe, a Russian Proton-K rocket blasted skyward from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 81.
It was November 20, 1998, and a rocket wasn't an unusual sight in this remote part of Kazakhstan. But today's cargo was a piece of history that would have seemed impossible just years before — the Zarya module, the first building block of a new International Space Station.
It was built by the Russians and paid for by the US. The Cold War rivals were now working side by side, taking the space race to a new level.
The Russian-built Zarya, seen from the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1998. (Supplied: NASA)
Two weeks after Zarya was launched, it was joined by Unity, a US-made component delivered by the space shuttle Endeavour that provided the connection between the Russian and US segments of the station.
A week later, NASA Commander Robert Cabana and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev ceremonially stepped foot on the station for the first time.
Today, the ISS has been continually occupied since November 2000 and more than 280 people from 26 countries have visited the ISS, orbiting the planet every 90 minutes or so.
But as it nears the end of its life, the space race is changing again and likely with it the end of the internationalist space era.
The International Space Station brought a new era of space exploration. (Supplied: NASA)
From 'Space Station Freedom' to cooperation
The idea of the ISS wasn't hatched as a fresh beginning for the bitter rivals.
It started as a Reagan-project between European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies, with the very American name "Space Station Freedom".
But once the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, its longer history of manned space stations — including the Salyut series and Mir — meant the Russian Federation was invited to join a revised project with a new name.
Space archaeologist Alice Gorman says Russia's "tremendous amount of experience" was key for the ISS's early modules.
"By the time the station is put together, the Cold War was over but it's still culturally present in a lot of ways," the associate professor says.
"It meant we entered a whole new era of space with international cooperation dominant."
Of course, geopolitical tensions don't disappear overnight. Tensions between the different nations would inevitably leak into the relationships on the ISS, particularly between the former Cold War foes.
In 2009, for example, there were two different disagreements over access to the station's toilets.
"Crew members always said they didn't let it get in the way too much, but how could it not — there were only two toilets on the ISS and you weren't allowed to use one of them! It's going to affect your day-to-day life."
NASA astronauts on the ISS in 2024. (Reuters/NASA)
25 years of messy cables
Since 2000, crews have been beavering away on an array of research and experiments on the space station, including developing pharmaceuticals and looking at how humans adapt to live in low gravity.
It also provides an eagle's eye over the planet, help scientists track weather from above (as seen in last year's Booker Prize winner Orbital, which was set on the ISS).
NASA has extended the ISS's operations from 2024 until 2030, when it will be abandoned and eventually guided into a managed descent through Earth's atmosphere into the South Pacific in early 2031.
Since that first launch in 1998, thousands of tonnes have been added or replaced over the year and the station is wearing out.
"It is getting a bit old, bits of it are not working. If anyone's looked at pictures of the inside …there are 25 years worth of cables, it's a pretty messy place," says Gorman, who has had her own archaeological research undertaken aboard.
Earth, as seen from the ISS. (Supplied: NASA)
As the only permanently occupied space station, Gorman says its legacy is enormous — and what comes next will look very different as commercial projects start to dominate the skies.
"It's going to go back to national or commercial space stations, so that concept of the big international crew working all together — that's gone," she says.
"Space stations will be much smaller… Crew will have to get used to living in tiny spaces, they're not going to have modules and modules to play in."
For a while, Gorman says there'll likely be few people in space and there may be times where there's no one in space — a different picture from today when there are 10 people in space (three Americans, three Russians and a Japanese on the ISS and three men on a Chinese station).
"The ISS really symbolised a period where the peaceful uses of outer space were being emphasised," Gorman says. "Without it the symbolic terrain becomes very different."
No comments:
Post a Comment