Thus, they need to take from somewhere in the program, and here is where we get to the ISS. This money has to come from somewhere, and NASA isn’t expecting the government to dramatically increase their funding anytime soon. To do this, they’re starting with a new program, Artemis, that will send humans back to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.įor Artemis to be fully effective, NASA needs to allocate a large portion of their overall budget for development of the new gear, equipment, and rocket parts. While it’s certainly a good task, they’re looking to expand and develop a functioning moon base around the year 2040. Why the United States May Be LeavingĪs we know, NASA has poured a huge amount of their resources within the past 20 years to operating the International Space Station. NASA, the ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) all shelled out significant amounts of money for their astronauts to have a seat on one of the Soyuz launches. The astronauts on the station can freely move from one to the other without issues, but each nation has the responsibility of taking care of their own side.įrom the end of the American Space Shuttle Program in July of 2011 until the recent SpaceX launch in May of 2020 all astronauts going to the space station had to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket. The space station is primarily made up of two parts the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment. Since the Cold War and the well-known Space Race between the two global powers tensions have lessened, but there is still a divide between the two. To anyone who knows really anything about the history of spaceflight, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. However, the two nations with the most time and money put into the space station are the United States and Russia. While it is an international endeavor funded by a variety of nations across the globe including Japan, Canada, and 22 separate European countries working together under the ESA (European Space Agency). Granted, a decent amount of that area is taken up by the massive solar panels that harness the sun’s energy to power the station. With a width of 358 feet and a length of 240 feet the International Space Station is about the size of an American football field. Afterwards, many more missions were made to launch more modules into orbit and dock them with various parts of the station, slowly growing in size over the next 10 years. The docking of Zarya and Unity was a success, and it marked a pivotal point in both human spaceflight and international relations between the United States and Russia. Needless to say, the Russians knew a lot about sending capsules up into space. Russian Mir Space Station as viewed from Space Shuttle Endeavour - Image Credit: NASA Additionally, the Mir Station was occupied for a total of about 12 years. They had already launched the Salyut 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 as well as the famous Mir Station, all of which being occupied by humans for at least two weeks. By this time, the Russians had already experimented with launching their own, significantly smaller space stations. The first module to be sent up was the Russian Zarya, in November of 1998. Nine years later in 1993 after several other countries planned to contribute to the assembly of the station, it was made official under the name the International Space Station. From 1998, it took about a decade for the space station to be deemed complete, and even then more modules were still being flown up to be attached.Īs early as 1984, designs for an American space station were made public. It needed to be built in 16 separate modules, with each of them being flown up by one of three rockets the American Space Shuttle, the Russian Proton Rocket, or the Russian Soyuz Rocket. The Beginning of the International Space Stationīeing the gigantic piece of technology it is, the ISS could not be built on the ground and flown up all at once. To understand why the future of the ISS may be in jeopardy we must first look back at its history. Over the many years of existence hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth the ISS has made many new inventions possible. Over the 20 years that astronauts have continously occupied the space station there have been a vast number of scientific experiments conducted there. However, with the launch of its new Artemis Program, designed to get humans back on the lunar surface, NASA plans to stop their funding for the ISS. Since the launch of its first module in November of 1998, the ISS has been an icon of human exploration. Costing NASA a whopping $4 billion a year just to keep it operational, the International Space Station is certainly no cheap endeavor for the government of the United States.
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