The International Space Station (ISS) is a large artificial satellite that orbits Earth. The ISS is assembled with multiple components and parts such as solar arrays, trusses, and more. The station is the largest artificial body in space with the length of 350 ft and width 240 ft which is close to the size of a football field. It orbits for an average altitude of 205 miles to 270 miles up and speeds up 27,600 kph which takes approximately 90 minutes to do a full orbit around Earth.
Structure and Construction
The first component that was released into space was the Zarya FGB in November 1998.. All components and modules were sent to the ISS via the Space Shuttle and attached to the main body using the Canadarm which currently now 159 components since June 5, 2011.Many of the modules were contributed by Russia giving them a higher reputation to contribute to space technology. At the start of construction, many vital parts were missing including long term life support functions and more due to the lack of modules. But as many years went by, more and more parts were added to cover the necessities up in space.
Crew Activities
Using the timezone UTC, Coordinated Central time, the crew members usually wake up at 6:00 and have multiple conferences throughout the day with mission control eats breakfast and after does exercises until 1:00. The crew then eats lunch and work is continued. They then eat dinner and repeats. On weekdays, they work for 10 hours a day and on Saturdays for 5 hours but for the other days it's either relaxation or catching up on work. Drinks and soup are created by using flavoured powder and mixing it with water.
Food
Most food delivered to the ISS is freeze dried and kept in sealed plastic bags. Food does not have much taste up in space due to the microgravity resulting in adding more spices to make foods taste better. Crumbs are highly dangerous to prevent crumbs to clog air filters or other equipment.
Threats to the ISS
Space Debris in space has been a major issue among space exploration as in space, debris from all sorts including remains of previous space equipment and meteorites that fly at deadly speeds due to gravitational pull which can heavily damage shuttles, equipment and humans. Most debris cannot be tracked and monitored as there are millions and they come in many different sizes. This large risk has then created fear up in space. To add up, thousands of probes and equipment has been lost in space and may have been destroyed in the process thus creating an even greater risk for those in space. This will heavily damage the ISS if this occurs,
Radiation from the Sun has always been a risk as its dangerous in high amounts. Up in space, there isn’t much protection from the harmful rays as our equipment doesn’t match the same ability to protect us for long periods. Earth’s atmosphere has enough ozone to protect it but we won’t thus creating major health issues such as cancer up in space. For example, in the International Space Station. Radiation exposure there is so high that skin molecules start to deform increasing the risk of cancer as well.
Interactions and Transfers between Matter and Energy in the ISS
In the International Space Station (ISS), there are multiple interactions and transfers between Matter and Energy in the following categories; Food, Stars and Galaxies, The Big Bang Theory, and the Sun.
Food
First, there are different varieties of food ranging from fruits like oranges and apples to fast food like fries and hamburgers but how are were they made? Where was the origin for these materials and ingredients? One common food, bread, explains the cycle. Bread is a mixture of multiple ingredients like wheat and chemical compounds like yeast but the raw resource used to start the making of bread is wheat grain. Wheat grain is basically a small living organism with different chemical compositions that hold different proteins that take energy from the Sun to grow. This means wheat grain is a certain type of living organism that takes energy in the form of sunlight in order to function. Photosynthesis is the name for this biological process. This states that grain is a biological system that involves the transfer and interaction between molecules and chemical energies in the environment.
Since grain has these transfers and interactions, how does it relate to to the ISS? According to NASA, there has been experimental orbiting agriculture in the ISS where they test growing plants in a weightless environment to support living organisms. There has been multiple tests for spring wheat, sunflower, soybeans using biotic matter. With the different factors like higher levels of radiation, limited water supply, and others, matter and energy transfers will not be as clear up in the International Space Station compared with Earth. With different energy transfer in different environments, having a higher knowledge of different surroundings and its effects will benefit people on Earth of know what to do if we ever have a depletion of resources.
Stars and Galaxies
First, stars are extremely important to us. If stars never lived and died billions years ago, we would never have existed. Our solar system wouldn’t have been created without them. Stars were formed in the densest areas of molecular dust clouds. The regions was so cold, gases became solids and binded together. Once they’ve bonded together, it becomes more dense resulting in the centres of the molecular cloud to collapse over itself. The kinetic energy released from the collapse came in the form of heat which makes the temperature and pressure to increase significantly. Clumps of dust start to form and create their own gravity which then lets falling gas fall in through the centre. This creates thermonuclear fusion and transforms hydrogen into helium. The star slowly starts to die once hydrogen depletes and is replaced with helium nuclei. When the helium depletes, the star fully dies. This was the process of creating stars and dying of stars. The cycle repeated over and over until now. But how did hydrogen and helium come to be? The theory of the Big Bang has said to do so.
So how this relate to the ISS? Well the ISS orbits Earth because of its gravitational pull. It’s mass is way larger than the ISS providing the pull. This is a constant energy transfer as the iSS is constantly orbiting Earth. Without it, the iSS would stray out of orbit and would be obliterated in the emptiness of space.
The Sun
The Sun is essential to life on Earth as it is the closest Star to us. It supported how the solar system was created and how Earth was created. It gives us warmth and transforms its bank of hydrogen and helium into visible and infrared light for plants on Earth to flourish. This already is a transfer of matter and energy onto Earth. This same exact concept can easily apply on the ISS where the ISS absorbs the solar energy from the Sun using solar panels into electrical energy to support the devices on the ISS to keep running.
Also the Sun provides a massive gravitational pull to keep all the planets in the Solar System, including the Earth, to steadily orbit itself. Without its pull, planets would stray off into space. With its pull, it was also responsible for the formation of the Earth. For millions of years, the Sun’s molecular cloud pulled in dust and gaseous material to create orbits around the Sun. Planets started to form from collisions and later became the Solar System. The ISS was created by the fusion of different elements starting from hydrogen and helium which directly relates the Sun and the ISS.
Positive and Negative Social Impacts from the Contributions to The International Space Station
There are multiple scientific developments and technology that have a positive and negative social impact to me, Canada and the world such as the Canadarm and the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Canadarm was Canada’s greatest contribution to NASA. It had the ability to life over 30 000 kg on Earth and up to 266 000 kg in space due to the weightlessness. This arm had costed $110 million and was signed off to NASA in February 1981 which had been sent up to space in November 1981. The best tasks performed by the Canadarm was deploying and repairing satellites, docking space shuttles, and helping to construct the International Space Station (ISS). Canada had received a lot of feedback including several positive feedback from NASA and the from other countries. From the Canadarm, Canada has now been known as a great contributor to space exploration and technology giving Canada more awareness as a great country. This was a great and positive social impact to the people in Canada due to a larger connection to other countries especially USA who runs NASA.
Even with all the high praise from NASA, politicians in Canada were heavily worried if this contribution will fail and hurt Canada’s reputation due the amount effort Canada put into this arm. Luckily, the Canadarm was a significant contribution to the International Space Station.
The Hubble Space Telescope had been NASA’s greatest achievement in astronomy yet as it produced high quality images of locations from millions of light years away. The telescope was released into the atmosphere on April 24, 1990 and weighs 11, 110 kg and costed $10 billion dollars over 20 years. One of the greatest achievements from the telescope was accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe. Although the telescope has achieved so much, it had been fixed for over 20 years with flawed mirrors, broken solar panels, etc. It had a great social impact to the people in the world as it had revealed so much knowledge of the great unknown of the universe. As people knew more, people got more curious and was more dedicated to help out. This gave the telescope more funding, more awareness and bright patch to success.
But this contribution also worried the politicians across the globe especially due to its price and the amount of times we had to fix the minor problems of the telescope to fix it. But weighing out the achievements of the telescope to the price, it would be worth the price as there were hundreds of findings from the telescope.
Positive and Negative Environment Impacts from the Contributions to The International Space Station
There are multiple scientific developments and technology that have a positive and negative environmental impact to me, Canada and the world such as the Canadarm and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Canadarm was Canada’s greatest contribution to NASA. It had the ability to life over 30 000 kg on Earth and up to 266 000 kg in space due to the weightlessness. This arm had costed $110 million and was signed off to NASA in February 1981 which had been sent up to space in November 1981. The best tasks performed by the Canadarm was deploying and repairing satellites, docking space shuttles, and helping to construct the International Space Station (ISS). This arm involved multiple materials including titanium, stainless steel, and ultra-high-modulus graphite-epoxy which are highly rare and involves heavy mining. Mining is known for destroying landmasses and its heavy pollution which is extremely hurtful to the overall condition of the arm. The arm is also significantly large so there will be a high demand on materials resulting for even harsher environmental impact from the Canadarm. Pollution and destruction of landmasses affects everyone including my future land, Canada’s future land, and the overall warming of the Earth.
But although there are negative environmental impacts, there are multiple technological advancements to replace raw materials which in the future will reduce the amount of resource needed to do a more advanced job. With new methods to reduce heat or cooling things down, larger problems can be solved down on Earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope had been NASA’s greatest achievement in astronomy yet as it produced high quality images of locations from millions of light years away. The telescope was released into the atmosphere on April 24, 1990 and weighs 11, 110 kg and costed $10 billion dollars over 20 years. One of the greatest achievements from the telescope was accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The Hubble Telescope uses the toughest and most delicate materials ranging from aluminium, silicon, and even Kapton. But the amount of materials used were probably extracted from Earth by mining. Mining has its usual effects of destroying land and polluting Earth making it have negative environmental impacts to the world, Canada, and me due to pollution overall.
Even with all the negative environmental impacts from the telescope, new advancements to protect objects to the extremes can save resources in the future of more difficult and advanced tasks. New methods to reflect off heat or cool a system down can be used in the future.
Positive and Negative Economic Impacts from the Contributions to The International Space Station
Canadarm was Canada’s greatest contribution to NASA. It had the ability to life over 30 000 kg on Earth and up to 266 000 kg in space due to the weightlessness. This arm had costed $110 million and was signed off to NASA in February 1981 which had been sent up to space in November 1981. The best tasks performed by the Canadarm was deploying and repairing satellites, docking space shuttles, and helping to construct the International Space Station (ISS). The large economic downside from the Canadarm was it expenses and it was so much. Even with some of NASA aid to research and build the arm, it was extremely expensive. Canada’s economy was low to average and contributing such an expensive piece of equipment is scary and risky. This project took a toll and made Canada have some reduced cuts. This heavily affected Canada’s economy and its people.
Even with the heavy costs for the Canadarm, in the long run, Canada has received funding from other countries with its high praise for success of the arm. But with economically, the price is not outweighed by the other positive impacts of the Canadarm.
The Hubble Space Telescope had been NASA’s greatest achievement in astronomy yet as it produced high quality images of locations from millions of light years away. The telescope was released into the atmosphere on April 24, 1990 and weighs 11, 110 kg and costed $10 billion dollars over 20 years. One of the greatest achievements from the telescope was accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The cost in 20 years for the telescope was extremely expensive with the amount of trips to fix the flaws of the telescope and its position. But the full expenses of the space programs, the Hubble Space Telescope accounts for 5% of the total used in the program ($200 billion total).
But with all the negative economic setbacks from the telescope, there are hundreds of achievements and findings from the telescope to outweigh the cost in the long run. So cost seems worth it.
Bibliography
http://www.calpoly.edu/~rfield/OSQ%20OASESSPCBM.htm
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/f_lada.html
https://www.nasa.gov/content/benefits-for-humanity-farming-from-space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/nuts_.and._bolts/spacecraft_systems/
https://www.cnet.com/news/why-hubble-is-worth-every-penny/
https://www.ieee.ca/millennium/canadarm/canadarm_background.html
Credits:
Created with images by Barescar90 - "wheat cereal agriculture" • Hans - "spike wheat cereals" • Nupur Dasgupta - "golden wheat" • jayneandd - "Wheat" • WikiImages - "messier 101 ngc 5457 galaxy" • WikiImages - "sun fireball solar flare" • Always Shooting - "Bloody Sunrise" • masayukig - "rising sun" • WikiImages - "space walk astronaut international space station" • Hubble Space Telescope / ESA - "The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit" • WikiImages - "astronaut international space station space walk" • WikiImages - "telescope space telescope hubble weltraumteleskop" • NASA Hubble - "STS-125 MS5 Feustel and MS3 Grunsfeld during EVA3" • skeeze - "pillars of creation space cosmos"