Space station to fly till 2020 - RT Top Stories
“Assembly of the ISS will continue until 2015. The partners have already agreed to continue its maintenance till 2020. The agreement will be signed in a matter of months,” Vitaly Lopota, president and chief designer of Energia, producer of the Russian space workhorse Soyuz, said on Tuesday
He added that NASA has suggested an even greater extension of the station’s lifetime till 2028.
The International Space Station is mankind’s most ambitious and expensive project. The assembly has started in November 1998, and today the ISS has grown into a 330-ton construction. The latest plan was to run the project till 2015.
some info on the modules on ISS:
The U.S. pressurized elements and core systems were designed for Space Station Freedom. The Level 1 requirements for SSF were a 30 year life. Nearly everything inside them can be replaced very easily with the exception of fluid lines and power/data cabling in the standoffs and endcones. And those are liable to last for 50 years or more absent moisture and corrosive gases in the atmosphere (which are either prohibited from the station environment altogether or removed by the TCCS of the ARS racks). Unless the MMDS looks like it's been peppered by birdshot, the core elements will be fine. It's the external elements which will need replacing: PV arrays, TCS radiators, exposed power/data/fluid lines, etc.
Even so, the Russian segment is the big issue, it uses older designs that were meant for at most a decade or two. Zvezda is simply another Mir Core, and Zarya is a derived TKS module.
also, keep in mind that keeping the ISS around thru 2020/2028...will be expensive. I agree we should keep it up there for a bit, since the science return is going to go through the roof now that assembly is nearing completion. It's about 2 billion dollars a year to keep the station active. That comes out of the nasa budget which is already strained a bit. So that means exploration, unmanned and manned, as well as R&D and all other areas take a hit
damn budgets
some info on some iss research
HSF - International Space Station
regarding enabling technologies to go to mars
General ISS Science:
NASA - NASA - Space Station Science
Weekly (with some delay) Science update:
NASA - International Space Station (ISS) Research - from the ISS Program Scientist
Publications:
NASA - ISS Experiment and Facility Results Publications
List of all experiments performed by all expeditions (you can also search alphabetically and chronologically):
NASA - ISS Experiments by Expedition
this is russion experiments, but who cares, it is utilization of the ISS
Science Research On ISS Russian Segment
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Human Life Research
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Geophysical Research
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Earth Resources Sensing
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Space Biotechnology
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Technical Research
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Integrated Analysis And Program Formation
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Contract Activities
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Study Of Cosmic Rays
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Educational And Humanitarian Projects
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Space Technology And Material Science
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Problems Of Space Power Systems
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Interesting factoid: viruses become more virulent after going to space. So they are trying to figure out how to decrease the risks of virus infections for astronauts as well.
Article about the "Microbial Drug Resistance Virulence" experiment to be carried out during STS-123, a direct follow-on of a similar experiment whose results were published at the end of last year, showing that Salmonella has greater virulence after being in space, as other types of bacteria before:
Microscopic 'astronauts' to go back in orbit
"In the new experimental wrinkle, the team will test a hypothesis that may lead to decreasing or preventing the risk for infectious diseases to astronauts. The experiment will determine if the modulation of different ion (mineral) concentrations may be used as a novel way to counteract or block the spaceflight-associated increase in the disease-causing potential that was seen in Salmonella. "
and that was in 2008. Apparently they found a treatment for salmonella due to this research.
NASA - Vaccine Development
i think we were talking about spacesuits earlier in the thread?
A series of six sample spacesuit pressure garment assembly (PGA) fabric samples were prepared for the Materials International Space Station Experiment 7 (MISSE-7) flight experiment to test the effects of damage by lunar dust on the susceptibility of the fabrics to radiation damage. These included pristine Apollo-era fluorinated ethylene-propylene (FEP) fabric, Apollo-era FEP fabric that had been abraded with JSC-1A lunar simulant, and a piece of Alan Bean s Apollo 12 PGA sectioned from near the left knee. Also included was a sample of pristine orthofabric, and orthofabric that had been abraded to two different levels with JSC-1A. The samples were characterized using optical microscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. Two sets of six samples were then loaded in space environment exposure hardware, one of which was stored as control samples. The other set was affixed to the MISSE-7 experiment package, and will be mounted on the International Space Station, and exposed to the wake-side low Earth orbit environment. It will be retrieved after an exposure of approximately 12 months, and returned for post flight analysis.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090041618_2009042207.pdf
NASA - Payoffs from ISS Research
thats an update for now