It will take more than a decade and more than 30 missions to complete the International Space Station (ISS), the largest structure ever put into space by humans.
International Space Station
According to Space.com, the construction of the International Space Station began in 1998 and lasted until completion in 2011. The project development, initially called freedom, has been delayed due to technical and funding issues. However, this "final station" of the universe has been inhabited since November 2000.
NASA's Office of the Inspector General reports that NASA spends about $30 billion a year operating the ISS. This accounts for about a third of the budget for human space flights.
According to NASA, 258 people from 20 different countries have visited the ISS as of May 2022. Most of them are from the US (158 people) and Russia (54 people). Both research and space travel time on the ISS is allocated based on money or other resources contributed by different agencies.
Our largest space station currently revolves around the planet at a distance of more than 400 km from the surface of the earth. Due to the huge size of the solar panels, the ISS space station can actually be detected with the naked eye at dawn or sunset while flying in an area.
Multilateral cooperation efforts
Since most of the people visiting and working on the ISS are Americans and Russians, many believe the space station belongs to one of the two countries. However, this is just a common misunderstanding.
The ISS is a multinational project not owned by any single country. In fact, the ISS is the result of cooperation efforts between the US, Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
Space.com added that 15 countries have contributed to the formation of the ISS space station. The ISS's main partners are the US NASA, Russia's Roscosmos and the European Space Agency. These agencies have the largest funding contributions, but agencies from other countries such as the Aerospace Research Agency of Japan and the Space Agency of Canada have also cooperated with the ISS in their research.
Thanks to the deployment of private aerospace company Axiom Space, private spaceship users are working on the orbit complexes. Sometimes, astronauts from countries like the UAE also visit the ISS.
Plans for the space terminal have outlined that it will operate until 2024. However, NASA has approved an extension of the deadline to 2030. On this issue, Russia has announced that it will withdraw after 2024 to focus on building its own space station around 2028.
Experts have yet to determine how the International Space Station will operate after Russia's departure, and the plans for the International Space Station after 2030 are not clearly stated.
