After several false starts, NASA's plans for a space station got a leg up when the US invited Russia to become a part of a new, cooperative enterprise. The US, Russia, Canada, the European Space Agency and Japan would come together to create a phenomenal piece of technology: the International Space Station.
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Welcome to tech Stuff, production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech and I think we're in the penultimate space station episode, folks. So for those of you just you know, tuning into this episode and not hearing the others, this is a continuation of a series I've done about space stations. So we started off talking about monolithic stations, that is, stations that would launch into orbit, all in one piece, like fully formed, and you would use some sort of heavy lift launch vehicle to get them up up, you know, into orbit. That includes stuff like the Soviet Saliott stations, which also included a couple of military platforms, and also the US sky Lab station. Then and the following episode we focused a lot on Mir the Soviet slash Russian modular space station, because that particular space station was up in orbit and survived the transition from the Soviet Union dissolving and becoming its various you know, independent states. And then we followed that up with an episode about NASA's attempts to get its own modular space station up into orbit. That last one was a real gut punch because it involves a series of different proposals and attempts that you know, fizzled out at least as far as NASA's original plans go. But this all sets the stage for the International Space Station or the I S S, which is what I had intended to podcast about in the first place, because, depending upon whom you believe, that station is starting to near the end of its functional life. All right, so let's do a quick look at what was going on as we arrived at a point where the I S S becomes possible. First, you had a Russia. Back in the Soviet days, the Soviet Space Agency built several space modules that could serve as the core of a space station. Mirror's core module is an example of this. Another example was the Functional Cargo Block or f g B. Now, this type of module was originally intended for the Mirror space station, but it never launched to join Mirror. It was also part of a Soviet era anti ballistic missile system kind of like the star Wars program was supposed to be here in the United States, uh and similarly that also never achieved orbit. Now, some in the West suspected that the f g B module that would eventually become the first I S S component in space, which would be called zaria that that means dawn or sunrise in Russian. Anyway, they thought that it's possible that this f g B unit actually dated to the Soviet era, at least was largely constructed in the nineteen eighties. However, other documents show that while the design came from the Soviet era, the actual construction would take place in the nineties. More on that in just a bit. But the Russians also had another module with the designation of Saliot Dose eight do OS eight, And you might remember from the previous episodes that the Saliot program included space stations that had the DOS designation, and that Mirror's core module had the designation d OS seven. While the d O S eight was intended to serve as a core for successor space station, the Mirror two. There's supposed to be a second Mirror. The Soviets built d OS eight in the nineteen eighties, but for various reasons, that program never got off the ground, so to speak, and the module sat in storage in the factory for many years, and it would eventually emerge as Vezda, which means star in Russian, or possibly Zuesda, since the V and W sounds are a little tricky, I'll say Zvezda, but because I mean, I tried to look it up. But honestly, the the resources I looked at, I don't fully trust them because a lot of them just had that robot telling me it's Vezda. It sounds to me like it's just doing it, you know, phonetically. Anyway, over in the United States and Europe and Japan, you had various space programs all at work on the design and development of modules for what was going to be Space Station Freedom and then Space Station Alpha or Space Station Fred as some would call it, and these included a module from the European Space Agency that would be called Columbus and one from Japan called the Japanese Experiment Module or j E M or Keybo. But by the early es all of those plans were starting to fizzle out as the United States Congress began to bulk at the prospect of paying out for a space station that had made little progress since the Reagan administration had announced it. In That also put international strain on NASA because it had made commitments to these other space agencies, so the collapse of the Soviet Union did a serious number both on its own space program as well as the United States space program. So for decades, the rivalry between the United States and the USSR pushed governments to pour more resources into the space program for numerous reasons. One was to display technological superiority over an opponent in the Cold War. Another was to establish technologies that could potentially be weaponized in the future in a further escalation of the arms race. And of course there were the countless engineers and scientists who genuinely wanted to expand our understanding of space and science. But without that political rivalry, a lot of them was gone, at least on a political side. And you know, don't get me started on that. I find that so frustrating, as if, you know, pushing back the boundaries of ignorance is somehow not priceless all by itself. You never know what you're gonna learn or how you might be able to use it, and it could be an enormous benefit, but no, you know, unless there's that other guy to race against, it doesn't matter anyway. There was a real possibility to any space station plans from anyone, We're just gonna get tossed aside at least put on a back burner for a really long time. Russia was struggling with a financial and political crisis. The United States was struggling with the fact that the space station designs had moving goalposts and budgetary issues. So every time NASA was trying to readjust new criticisms were coming in and various politicians were starting to pull money away from NASA budgets. Also, by that point, Bill Clinton had become the president of the United States, so with a change in presidential administration comes another opportunity to salvage the work on developing a space station. This time, Russia would be invited to join that project rather than serve as some sort of antagonist. Clinton's team saw the possibility to combine the efforts of Russia with those of the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan to create an international space station. The big benefit here would be that the pieces that were already either fully built or in the process of being constructed, or at least ready to go into manufacturing, could still be put to use rather than just go to waste. To that end, US Vice President Al Gore and the Russian Prime minister whose name I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce. First name, Victor, I can get that one anyway. They together announced the planned partnership of the I S S what would become the I S S, and the agreement would also create bonds of international cooperation, which in turn could mean a shift in the arms race as well as a way to help Russia stabilize politically as well as economically in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. That's a good thing. You don't want unstable countries, especially unstable countries that might have access to enormous stores of weaponry. So the various countries all begin to form an inter governmental Agreement or i g A. This would create the three phases of the space station project. And actually this was the second i g A. The first one actually took place in nine, but that one was without Russia's involvement. That was back when it was still going to be you know, space station Freedom. The second agreement would come out like a decade later in nine. All countries except the United States in this agreement designated the i g A as a treaty in in the US. It was not a treaty. It was an executive agreement. Now that's an important distinction, because in the United States, a treaty with any foreign government requires that the United States Senate has to ratify that treaty by a two thirds majority vote. Executive agreements do not require that kind of ratification, and in fact, they can pretty much hold the same sort of powers as a treaty can. Now this is interesting because there's no express clause in the United States Constitution that actually grants US presidents this particular power. However, there's also nothing in there saying that they can't do that. So Clinton signed the executive agreement bypassing a congressional battle over the whole matter. And as NASA puts it, the new i g A established the overall cooperative framework for the design, development, operation, and utilization of the I s S and addressed several legal topics, including civil and criminal jurisdiction, intellectual property, and the operational responsibilities of the participating partners. Lower level bilateral memoranda of understanding or m o use were signed that same day by NASA Administrator Daniel Golden with his Russian, European and Canadian counterparts, and on February twenty with Japanese representatives, the m O used described the roles and responsibilities of the partners in more detail. A third layer consists of bartered contractual agreements establishing the trading of the partner's rights and duties end quote. Really interesting that bartering was part of this, because I'm going to cover a lot of the various components of the International Space Station in this episode, and many of those were part of this bartering, where you know, one party was saying all right, well, I'll let you do this, but you need to let me do this, and that all kind of came about as international cooperation. So all of this was going on while, of course Mirror was still operational and an orbit. And as I mentioned in the Mirror episode, US astronauts would actually visit the Mirror Space station as part of preparations for creating the International Space Station. There were ga gathering valuable information about life and space, the effects of space on the human body, and more. These findings would inform design decisions for the future space station modules. In fact, I should add the Mirror state in orbit until the spring of two thousand one, so there was operational overlap between Mirror and the International Space Station, so the Mere program continued while NASA, the E s A, Japan, Canada, and Russia worked on components for the new International Space Station. In things really got off the ground figuratively and literally. And not only is that when the participating countries signed that I G A and the m o US, it's also when the first component of the International Space Station launched into orbit. So ten months after that historic signing, Russia sent the Zarya module up into orbit aboard a launch vehicle called the Proton K, essentially a big old rocket. All right, So let's address some stuff here. Now I mentioned earlier or that Zaria's design at the very least traces its origin to the Soviet era. Now, the purpose of the Zaria module was to act as a station keeping component. That is, it is a part of the station that can work to maintain a fixed distance from other stuff in orbit to allow for things like docking maneuvers and all that kind of stuff. It's important for the stabilization of the station. It would also serve as a source of battery power for the station, including you know, having having solar arrays that could help charge the batteries. Are really not help charge the batteries, charge the batteries. And uh. It was based off the f GB cargo spacecraft design. Now the thing is a module that was meant to do the very same thing as Zaria was originally part of this Soviet anti ballistic program called Skiff, which was an abandoned project. They tried to launch a laser based anti ballistic weapon up into space. The Russians did, but that launch failed. So there were some folks who suspected that Zaria was not made in the nineties but was actually a leftover, perhaps even a spare f g B that was originally meant for this weapons program back in the eighties. Now, if that was the case, then the United States was essentially helping fund something that was already built. Right because the United States paid the bill for Russia to make this thing, it could be that they already had it made and they were just like, yeah, no, things are going great, keep sending the money, you know, checks in the mail. It would largely explain how this spacecraft managed to come in under budget and on time. Those are two things that are pretty darn rare when it happens in the space industry. Now, does that mean for sure that it was actually built in the eighties but passed off as being built in the nineties. No, No, not at all, just that it's possible, but whether it was constructed in the nineteen eighties or the nineties, Zaria did launch into space on November twentie n It launched from Kazakhstan and it got into orbit without any major problems. Now, the intent was to have Zaria operate on its own with no crew aboard for up to eight months, and it would turn out that the module would be lonely a bit longer than that. Now, broadly speaking, you can think of the I S S as being made of two major sections. There's the Russian orbital segment or r O S, and there is the US Orbital segment or U S O S. Zaria is the module that connects the R O S to the U S O S, or at least on the Russian side. So Zaria is twelve point five six meters that's a bit more than forty one feet long, and it's four point one one ms or about thirteen and a half feet wide at its widest point. It is sort of a uh you know, it's a cylinder, but a stepped cylinder, so it's not all the same diameter across the entire length of spacecraft. Like I said, it also has a pair of solar arrays that stretched out to either side, kind of like wings to help you know to to generate electricity. Zaria has three docking ports, one on each end of the module, So like if you look at a cylinder, one on one end of the cylinder, one on the other, and there's a third one that faces Earth, typically on the outer circumference near the forward end of the module. They call this the Nader So you have the Nader ports. Those are ones that typically face towards Earth in the I S S normal orientation, and then you have the zenith ports, which face away from Earth in I S S is normal orientation. Then you also have port and starboard uh ports, and some of these starboard being the right hand side, assuming you're facing forward and your upright. You normally don't have to say that because you're normally talking about starboard import on a boat, and you're almost always upright on a boat unless you're really sick, and then port of course is the left side. So anyway, those are the various directions. We try to keep them straight. It's hard to do when you're talking about being in a microgravity environment. We're up and down are more concepts than anything else anyway. So three ports, one on either end of this module, one on the nader or Earth facing side of Zaria and uh Zaria links to the Vezda module on the aft end, and it connects to a U S module we're going to talk about in the second on the forward end, and it connects to a third module called Ross Vett on the earth facing port. Although originally that port was actually used for Selia's space capsules to dock with the station. As I mentioned, this module alone was not enough to support life aboard the station, so there was no crew at this point. The second component to join the I S S was the U S built Unity Module. This is a connector piece kind of Its main purpose is to connect the R O S section of the space station with the U S O S section, so this is the United States version of that. It also serves as a crew dining area, and it launched on December four as part of the Space Shuttle Endeavor mission. So this module was in the payload of that space shuttle. We'll talk more about Unity as well as lots of other modules on the I S S after we come back from this quick break. All right, we're back to Unity. Let's learn some more about this particular little module, which again was sort of the connector piece, one of three nodes, as it would turn out. So there are two other um units aboard the I S S or part of the I S S that are similar to Unity. So Unity measures five point four seven ms or nearly eighteen feet long and four point five seven ms or fifteen feet in diameter, so it looks like a very short cylinder when you're at a distance. Right has six ports on it, as one on either end. So these are the axial births. That's b E r t h S. Not not birth is in like birthday, but birth is in you know, ship birth. And it also has four along the circumference of the spacecraft if you like. These would be the zenith, nadir um and port and starboard h ports or births so on the forward and aft births, which are called the common birthing mechanisms. Again b E R t H these are cb ms. These at these ends, they had two pressurized mating adapters one on either side. These are called p m as, and as the name suggests, p m as serve as a way to connect two components together and maintain a pressurized environment so that different pieces could link together. The p m A on the aft side of Unity dock with the Zarya module at the p m A on the forward side would later serve as a docking point for space shuttles, though in subsequent missions, crews would disconnect this p m A and attach it to other births while connecting new components to the I S S, so it was not permanently affixed to the forward side. It was, however, and is permanently affixed to the aft side, where it connects to the Russian part of the space station. Astronauts a board Endeavor used the shuttle's robotic arm to connect Unity to Zaria, locking the two pieces together and creating the first linked modules for the I S S. It still wasn't ready to support a crew yet, but it was the first step towards the dream of an international space station. You know in space Now I mentioned that Unity, the connector module, uh you know, serves as a place where crews eat meals together, and it also acts as a pass through for the various electrical and fluid systems on board the I S S, meaning it allows for those things to continue through this module and connect to others. Very important, like all these modules need to not just fit together, that they need to allow the various systems, especially life support, to go from one unit to another so that you have it throughout the entire space station. A unity was responsible for one of these things, even though it wasn't itself, uh, you know, a life support system module. Now, the plan was to add other components in pretty short order and get the station to a point where it could be habitable for cruise. Like the idea was, all right, we'll get the third module up there with life support, and then we'll have a crew aboard and we'll be ready to go by the end of But the next module to go up would be a Russian one, and the Russian space program rose Cosmos was really struggling. The United States, as I said, actually owned Zaria, having paid for its construction. Again, assuming it wasn't already constructed, Zvezda would need extra help in order to get off the ground, both figuratively and literally, and it got some help from and I promise I'm not making this up Pizza Hut. So Russia as a whole was still really unstable economically around this time, and the Space Agency, while never lacking in scientific expertise and ingenuity, often found itself strapped for cash, which makes it really hard if you want to launch something into space. So part of the funding for this project actually came from advertising. Pizza Hut spent a truckload of money to have its company logo painted on the Proton launch vehicle that it carries Vesta up to orbit. The New York Times reported that the pizza company spent about half of what it would take to run a thirty second ad during the Super Bowl at that time, and that was around two and a half million dollars, so more than a million dollars, maybe a little less than a million and a half. And hey, you know, this might sound a little crass about, you know, slapping a logo on the space rocket, but the money helped keep the dream of the I S S alive. Zvezda would be the first module to actually have a life support system incorporated into it, so would finally allow people to go aboard the young I s s. Once everything was connected and operational, Zvesda launched on July twelfth, two thousand. The initial docking with the aft port of Zaria happened on July two thousand. However, it would take a Space Shuttle mission that was launched a few months later in September for astronaut h and a cosmonaut and astronaut cosmonaut each to go on a spacewalk and make all the cable connections between Vesta and Zaria. That spacewalk lasted more than six hours to get all those connections complete, and at the end of it, Vesta, Zaria and by extension unity, we're all connected together. On September twelve, two thousand, all the systems operational members of the Space Shuttle crew boarded the space station for the first time. Now as part of that transfer, Zaria's computers handed over control of the station to VESDA. So Zaria now was no longer mission control for the Russian part of the space station, and Zvezda would serve as the living quarters for astronauts in the time. For the time being, it also had propulsion systems for making attitude and orientation adjustments to the station. Very important, and it also had a communication system for making contact with Earth. Finally, after components had been in orbit for about two years, the space station would have occupants and it would maintain some crew, sometimes a very small one, but it would always have a crew all the way up to and including today, So since September two thousand twelve, there has always been at least a crew aboard the I S S. So Zezda would be home to early cruise at the I S S. You might wonder what it was like. LA module was thirteen point one long, that's about forty three and our feet in length rather and it's whitest point in Its diameter is four point three fives that's a bit more than fourteen feet, and it has four docking ports. Three of those are part of a section called a transfer compartment, which it's at one end of this So imagine like a cylinder has almost like a ball at one end. That's the the where the transfer compartment is, and that's where you could find three of those ports. Uh. And it's at the forward end, like I said, of the the module, you have one port in the axial direction, so it means coming out from the end and The other two ports are on either side of the sphere at ninety degrees from the axial port, so you can think of him as Zenith and Nadier up and down. You can also think of them as left and right, depending on how you're looking at the station. So the axial port docked with Zaria, so these modules connected end to end. You can think of him as like two cylinders connected end to end with one another. The other two ports on the transfer compartment attached ultimately would attach to the Poist module on one side, and originally a module called Piers on the other, but Piers would later get swapped out for a new module called Naka, which will have a lot more to say about later on. A fourth docking port was on the aft end of the VESDA module, so on the opposite side of the cylinder. This would serve as a docking port for Soya's spacecraft and cargo ships coming up from Russia to resupply the station. This VESDA supports up to six crew members, actually as sleeping quarters for two, so folks have to kind of sleep in shifts. It also has other necessities like a toilet, obviously really important astronauts who flew aboard the Apollo missions could tell you all about that, and it also had exercise equipment in order to help crew members stay healthy in space and counteract things like muscle and bone loss. It also has a kitchen area for food preparation. There are fourteen windows in Zvezda UM, including one in each of the sleeping compartments, and one of the carryovers from the Soviet era of Russia's space program would end up being a real source spot for VESDA, also for Zaria. So. NASA's approach to space modules was to include components that could be swapped out, so that should something fail, you could bring up a replacement on a subsequent mission, remove the failed piece of equipment and install the new one, and now you've got operational abilities back again. Russia built everything directly into their spacecraft like it was not something that was removable, so if anything failed, then the only approach you had was to repair the thing that failed. Otherwise it was just useless because there was no way to replace it. You couldn't get out and put a new whatever it was in like a new computer system, for example. You either fixed what you had or you had a broken one and that was it. So that included Vezda's oxygen generation system. The device used is called an electron that's E L E K T R O N, and it uses surprise surprise electricity to generate oxygen from water. This process is called electrolysis. I've talked about it a few times on this show. Is pretty darn simple and concept you you apply an electric charge to water molecules, and that that electricity, that that energy breaks the molecular bond between oxygen and hydrogen, and both of them get released as gases. Now, you could theoretically use that hydrogen as fuel, but it's pretty dangerous stuff. It's incredibly flammable, and so the electron system would simply vent hydrogen into space, but the oxygen would be used as part of the life support system. But the trouble is the electron system on Zvezda is pretty darn rickety. I mean, it was originally developed for the Mere space station, and frequently it requires repairs because as a tendency to break down, and the cosmonauts can't get a new electron into the Vezda module because and here's a classic problem, the electron system is larger than the Vezda modules hatches, so in other words, you couldn't get a replacement system in there because it won't fit through the door. Whoops. Say. But anyway, back in two thousand, all of this was brand new and started breaking down yet, and on September twelve, two thousand, there would be a crew aboard the space station and there has been every day since. Next the US attached a trust segment called the Z one to Unity and also added a third pressurized mating adapter, the other two being mounted to either axial end of Unity and the trust of the space station. You could think of it like a scaffold. Uh. It's it's a it's a skeleton in a way upon which you can suspend numerous components, and there are a ton of them. Uh. This trust extends outward from the space station, and it can hold stuff like the massive solar arrays. When you look at a picture of the space station and you see those big wings of solar arrays, those connect back to the trusts of the space station. Uh, but a lot of other stuff connects to it. To The Z one was the first of these trust pieces, and NASA would add to this many many times over the following years. However, I'm just gonna let you know, I'm gonna skip all of those different trust editions because there's a ton of them. They're important, but if I focused on all those, I would never get to the modules. So the next module to join the party was from the United States, and this was the Destiny module. It launched on February seven, two thou one aboard this Space shuttle Atlantis, docking with the other end of the Unity capsule on right tenth and before that could even happen, the Atlantis crew used the Space shuttle's robotic arm to detach the p M A two from Unity's forward docking port. So this was the one that was opposite the one that connects Unity to the Russian module Zarya. The p M A two got shuffled around a bit until Destiny had been docked into place uh in the forward side of Unity, and then the Atlantis crew reattached p M A two to the other end of Destiny. It would take several days for a strong astronauts to make all the connections necessary in order to bring Destiny fully online. Now, this module is eight point four meters or twenty eight feet long, and it has a diameter of four point two meters or fourteen feet, and it kind of looks like a can of soda to me. But obviously with docking ports on either axial end, uh, those are the only two docking ports on Destiny. It does not have any of the ones at the zenith, nader or starboard or ports sides, so it just has one on either end of the cylinder. Destiny serves as the first and primary research lab aboard the I S S, at least on the U S O S side. This is where the science gets done, but you know, not to make a neat gun for the people who are still alive. We're talking about biomedical experiments, engineering experiments, physics experiments, earth science experiments, material science experiments, all that kind of stuff. When you think of the science that's happening aboard the International Space Station, Destiny is the primary spot where that stuff happens, not the only one, but the main one. So this is the kind of stuff that astronauts aboard the sky Lab space station focused on back in the nineteen seventies. Destiny was the first module to make use of racks to hold various station systems and experiments in place. So these are kind of like mounting points for various experiments. Obviously, when you're in a microgravity environment, you've gotta have ways to attach stuff to your spacecraft or else it's just gonna you know, float around and bump around in microgravity. So these are standardized racks, and in fact they're called International Standard Payload Racks or i sprs, and other countries with the exception of Russia, use the same standard, so that experiments and systems can fit on any of these. The Destiny has eight rack bays and they can hold up to twenty four racks. These things, by the way, are massive, unearthed, way around t pounds. Of course in microgravity you don't have to worry about that now. As I mentioned, some of those racks hold station systems in place, you know, stuff like life support systems and electrical power systems or climate control systems. Uh and Destiny did not have the full complement of twenty four racks when it launched. It had some, but not all of them. Additional space shuttle missions would bring up more racks, which would then get installed into the rack bays in Destiny's lab. Destiny also includes a twenty inch window of incredible clarity. NASA calls it like the quality of a telescope lens, like that kind of level of clarity, and astronauts mostly use this to conduct Earth science experiments. So if you've ever felt like someone was just kind of watching you, maybe it was a peeper aboard the I S. S. Except it doesn't like magnify everything. Obviously I'm being a little facetious. The pictures of it are amazing, but obviously, like then, you're looking at a lens through a lens, right, you're looking at a camera image of the glass. I really wish I could see what it looks like to look at the Earth through that glass, you know, in person, I imagine has to be absolutely spectacular. We've got a lot more to say about the I S. S. And boy, this is really a huge, huge undertaking. We are going to take another break and come back right after this. Okay, let's get back to it. In July two thousand one, the United States launched a joint airlock module named Quest and this module attached to the Unity module, and it gave astronauts on the U S O S side of the space station the ability to perform e V A S or spacewalks, because up to that point the only airlock aboard the space station was on the Russian side of the I S S, so, uh, you know, astronauts weren't really going over to the Russian side and vice versa, so they didn't really get to use that airlock. All the other e v A s that were performed on the US side had been part of Space Shuttle missions rather than and you know, conducted by the crew aboard the I S S because they had no airlock to go through in order to you know, exit the station and do an e v A. But Quest changed all that. Then the Russians launched another module in September two thou one. This one was the Piers module, that's p I R S, and the Russians docked it with a port on This Vezda module frequently referred to as the bottom or Nadier Point because it was facing the Earth usually and it served as a docking module. In other words, this was a way for other spacecraft like so Yu's capsules and cargo ships unscrewed cargo ships two dock with the I S S. It could also serve as an airlock so that cosmonauts could go on e v A. So this expanded the station's ability to have you know, spacecraft dock with it. I should add that one thing that is consistent aboard the I S S is that it always has a couple of Soya's capsules attached to it to serve as escape capsules, so that should there be a catastrophic failure aboard the space station, cosmonauts and astronauts would have the ability to get into a spacecraft capable of making the return back to Earth. So some of these docking ports end up being in use as these these various capsules stay attached for up to like six months at a time before being swapped around. Now, this module, the Piers module, is one that we can actually refer to in the past tense because while it was part of the I S S for a really long time, I mean almost twenty years, it is no longer part of the I S S today. Earlier this year, Russia removed Peers from the I S S and maneuvered it for re entry and de orbited the module on July one. This was so that they could make room for a new module, which we will talk about possibly in the next episode, because this one's running longer than I anticipated. But for twenty years, piers was a big part of the I S S. Then, from the end of two thousand one to two thousand seven, the I S S pretty much stayed as I described it, with no other modules joining, although crews would continue to join and leave through various so us and a few spatial emissions. Also, the trust section did get larger with more components, but as I said earlier, I'm not gonna cover all those. It would just take way too much time. It's fascinating stuff, by the way, I mean like it added tons of different functionality to the I S S. But I gotta draw the line somewhere anyway. Part of the reason for that long delay, why nothing happened really as far as modules are concerned between two thousand one and two thousand seven, is that the Space Shuttle program was grounded due to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that happened on February first, two thousand three. Just like NASA put the spatial program on pause for more than two years after the Challenger disaster, they did the same thing after Columbia. Shuttle missions would not start again until July of two thousand five, so it really set back plans of building out the I S S and only Russian capsules visited the I S S in the meantime, and a skeleton crew of two people served to occupy the station at that point because there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to do much else. So this was an era of the I S S where not that much science is getting done. You only got two people aboard there. They have to handle everything aboard the station, not just the experiments, but you know, the regular maintenance and operations of the station itself. The next module to join would not launch until October two thousand seven. It was aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, and this would be the module that would be called Harmony. And this module is very similar to Unity. It's one of the node modules, and like I said, a third one will join the I S S before we're all done with it, so, like you know, Unity, Harmony's purpose is partly to provide connecting points between other units in the space station, but it also serves as sleeping quarters for up to four crew members. Initially, Harmony docked with one of the births on Unity, so that these two nodes were connected directly to each other, but a few weeks later, crews would move Harmony to the other end of Destiny, so that Destiny connected to unity on one end and Harmony on the other end. Harmony also serves as the mounting location for the space station's robotic arm Cannad armed too. It also has four I sprs dedicated to cruise storage and another four I s p r s for avionics systems. In two thousand eight, the European Space Agency module Columbus joined the I S s NOW. This was originally intended to be part of Space Station Freedom more than a decade earlier, you know, back when that was still a thing. Columbus launched aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis on February seven eight. It is seven ms long, that's twenty three ft and it's four and a half meters in diameter or fifteen feet and they can hold up to ten I s p rs for science experiments and then more for various systems. The e s A technically has operational control of Columbus, NASA has the rest of it. That means that the two agencies actually split these racks between them, so e s A has control of five racks for experiments and NASA has control of the other five and that they just share the space. They cohabitate. Like Destiny, the activities on Columbus are geared towards scientific experiments and expanding our knowledge, particularly when it comes to ace exploration. Columbus docked with the starboard port of Harmony on February eleven eight. So again, that means if you were in the Harmony module and your right side up, which is you know, again a weak distinction when you're in space and you have the Destiny module behind you that's to your aft you're facing forward, that would mean that Columbus would be on your right hand side. You would need to go through the hatch on the right to get to the Columbus module. Again, all these directions get pretty loosey goosey when you start to lose reference points like up and down, so your mileage may vary. I guess next up. Shortly after Columbus came the Japanese Experiment Module or KEYBO. Now, Keybo is a really big module. It's so big that it required three separate shuttle missions to bring all the major pieces of the module up to the I S S. Like Columbus, Kebo connected to Harmony, on the port side, so that's the left side of harmony if you've got destiny behind you and your right side up. And it has twenty three I s p rs aboard it those racks, those enormous experiment racks. UH. Ten of those are reserved for science. The rest are for Keybos systems and crew storage. Keybo has its own robotic arm. It also has its own communication system. UH. It hosts a ton of different science experiments, and that includes stuff like Earth science experiments that monitor the CEO two content of the atmosphere of our planet. Has X ray astronomy experiments, electron telescopes, cosmic ray experiments, lots of really super cool stuff. It also hosts various physics and biology experiments. And then there's an exposed facility. This is a a part of the Keybo module that attached to the far end of it. UH. This is a science platform that's exposed to space for those kinds of experiments, you know, the kind where there ain't no air out there. It's a little tricky to talk about the size of Kebo because of all these different pieces that came together. If we're just looking at the pressurized parts of the module as the bits that astronauts can move through without wearing a spacesuit. Then you have one part of it that is about eleven ms long or thirty six and a half feet long, and it has a diameter of about four point four meters or a little more than fourteen feet. But then there's a second part of it, a module that extends out from KEBO at a ninety degree angle of this tube. So think of this one pressurized tube and then think of like almost like a submarine, you know, has like that that console at the the at one end, you've got this this part that juts out of one side of the tube at ninety degrees. This one's four point two meters long or thirteen point eight feet and four point three nine ms or fourteen point four feet in diameter. So KEBO isn't a simple cylindrical shape like most of the other modules. It's a little funky looking. Next up we get the Poisk module p o I s K. This was the first of the Russian Orbiting System the r OS portion of the space station to be added after many many years. POIS is similar to the Piers module, in fact almost identical to it, and Piers as I will remind you it docked back with the I S S way back in two thousand one. So POIS serves as a docking you know, docking compartment primarily just as Piers used to do before. You know, they gave it the boot from the I S S earlier this year. POIS thus houses an airlock and docking system, and it attached to this Vesdam module on the side opposite the Piers side, or rather, you know the side where Piers used to be, so it's on the Zen side. On February ten, NASA launched a module called Tranquility aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Now this one was commissioned by the EESA and the Italian Space Agency or a s I. The module's main purpose is to provide life support systems, environmental control systems, and an observation coupola to the space station, sort of like a quality of life module if you think about it. And Tranquility has six ports or birthing locations, allowing it to connect to up to six other components on the space station. Uh, it docked with the port side of Unity, and we'll chat about a couple of the other components that have since docked with tranquility in our next episode. But um, I want to do one more before we we wrap up here, and that is the ras Vett module r A S S V E T. And if you're thinking that sounds like that's Russian, you're right. It joined the I S S and Rasvet's main purpose is to serve as a storage container as well as another docking for spacecraft. This one didn't fly aboard a Russian launch vehicle. It actually went up courtesy of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on May and docked with the I S S on May eighteenth. It connected with the bottom or native point of these Azario module, the original I S S module that started this whole thing, and the other port on Rassevet serves as a docking port for Soya's spacecraft and cargo spacecraft. This module is six meters or about nineteen point seven ft long and two point three five or seven point seven feet in diameter. All Right, we're gonna wrap up here and we're gonna come back in our next episode to pick up where we left off. Talk about the last few modules that have joined the I S S, including the Naka which is the most recent one. Uh. And we've got another one on the way before the end of the year if everything goes well, So we'll talk about those, and we'll talk about what life is like aboard the space station, some of the experiments that have been done, some of the you know, interesting things that have happened aboard the space station, ring it's you know, time and service, as well as talk a little bit about the plans of what comes next, like how much longer does the I S S have before we really need to consider retiring it because various components are pretty old at this point, and what should come after that. But we'll do that for the next episode. This one has gone on long enough. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. 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