The ISS “Health Checkups”

The ISS is a space laboratory. The first crew habited it in 2000. It has supported humans for about 22 years. And every now and then, it cracks or breaks. And we need to make sure that the ISS is in tip top shape so it can continue supporting humans. We need the ISS for many reasons. Number 1 is that the ISS allows humans to stay in a low earth orbit for much longer than a space shuttle or Soyuz, and the benefit of that is many things: We can conduct ongoing science without having to come back after let’s say 3 weeks. With the ISS, the maximum time anyone stayed is more than 355 days! Boy! He probably wasn’t in any hurry to get home! Another thing is that it acts as a testing ground for longer deep space missions because it shows how people live in zero g or how your body changes on longer deep space missions. So it’s important to keep the ISS safe, strong, and secure.

The ISS cuisine

Astronauts eat a number of foods to nourish themselves on long duration space flights. These foods are quick to make and very tasty. Let's say you want to eat some mac & cheese abort the ISS. The mac & cheese is sent to the ISS aboard a cargo ship either a Russian Progress craft or a commercial spaceship. It docs to the ISS all the food packages are sent to the ISS food storage area. The foods are dehydrated which means that all the water is taken out of them to eat it you must rehydrate them. So to do that, there is a machine that dispenses his water into the food so you take your mac & cheese and float through the chambers of the ISS until you get to the dispenser. There you put the  food inside and water will fill up in it to hydrate it. It may seem quite weird but imagine if the water was making your food taste good and someone took it away. And you must be able to rehydrate to make it taste good. So after that you can heat it up in the microwave oven. Once you're done, you take a spoon or a fork, cut the package open, and dig in!

Farewell  ISS!

 Sometime in 2030 the ISS will be deorbited, re-enter the earth's atmosphere, and crash  into the Pacific Ocean. Why? Well the ISS has been up and running with crew since 2000 and that means it is pretty old for its times. So we need to replace it with new space stations that have newer technology which makes it safer. For example, take the Mir space station. It was very old and eventually it got so bad that even a fire ignited on the spacecraft burning and incinerating part of the space station. Luckily the crew survived and the fire burned out. That is an example that shows we need to replace things. But since it is scheduled for 2030, we still have 8 more years to continue the amazing science experiments and discoveries.