Updated By: LatestGKGS Desk
International Space Station 'ISS' Turns 20 Years: Details, Features, History
International Space Station 'ISS' Completes 20 Years: Details, Features, History
The International Space Station (ISS) has completed 20 years on 20th November 2018.
The ISS project was launched by Russian Space Agency 'Roscosmos' when it launched its Zarya module from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 20th November 1998.
The International Space Station (ISS) is the habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. It travels at a continues speed of 5 miles per second and orbits around Earth about every 90 minutes. Therefore in a complete day of 24 hours, ISS orbits around Earth 16 times witnessing 16 sunrises and sunsets.
The first component of ISS was launched into Earth’s orbit in 1998 and the last pressurized module was fitted in 2011.
The ISS was built by the cooperation of five major space agencies – NASA, RSA, ESA, CSA, and JAXA. Apart, 16 countries have contributed to the construction of ISS -United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
ISS size is about 356 feet (109 meters) by 240 feet (73 meters) and weighs almost 1 million pounds, it was built by an estimated cost of about 150 billion USD.
ISS is the largest man-made structure put into low Earth orbit and can often be observed from Earth with naked eye on a clear day
Since November 2000. More than 200 individual from 18 countries has visited the International space station.
