This month, the International Space Station turns 10.
One of the coolest examples of humanity’s huge leaps forward in technology, it’s still an amazing sight to behold 10 years later.
In December 1998, the crew of Space Shuttle Mission STS-88 began construction of the International Space Station. Long live the ISS!
Click to Enlarge:
![Russian-built FGB, also called Zarya, approaches the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the U.S.-built Node 1, also called Unity [foreground]](https://darkintheboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/backdropped-against-a-blanket.jpg "Russian-built FGB, also called Zarya, approaches the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the U.S.-built Node 1, also called Unity [foreground]")
Above Endeavour’s external tank is the vent hood, known as the “beanie cap,” at the end of the gaseous oxygen vent arm, extending from the fixed service structure. Below is the orbiter access arm with the White Room at the end, flush against the shuttle. The rotating structure provides protected access to the shuttle for changeout and servicing of payloads at the pad. Photo taken Nov. 14, 2008.
The Phantom Torso, seen here on May 13th, 2001 in the Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS), is designed to measure the effects of radiation on organs inside the body by using a torso that is similar to those used to train radiologists on Earth. The torso is equivalent in height and weight to an average adult male. It contains radiation detectors that will measure, in real-time, how much radiation the brain, thyroid, stomach, colon, and heart and lung area receive on a daily basis. The data will be used to determine how the body reacts to and shields its internal organs from radiation, which will be important for longer duration space flights.
Before separation, the shuttle and space station had been docked to one another for 7 days. Endeavour moved downward from the space station, then began a tail-first circle at a distance of about 500 feet. The maneuver, with pilot Michael J. Bloomfield at the controls, took about an hour.
The Canadarm2 aboard the ISS has multiple joints and is capable of maneuvering payloads as massive as 116,000 kilograms, equivalent to a fully loaded bus.
SuitSat, an unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit, was outfitted by the crew with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter, which faintly transmitted recorded voices of school children to amateur radio operators worldwide. The suit entered the atmosphere and burned a few weeks later.
New Zealand!
During the six-hour, 52-minute spacewalk, Bowen and astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (out of frame), mission specialist, worked to clean and lubricate part of the station’s starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ) and to remove two of SARJ’s 12 trundle bearing assemblies. The spacewalkers also removed a depleted nitrogen tank from a stowage platform on the outside of the complex and moved it into Endeavour’s cargo bay.
Extraordinarily Epic!
🎭 