International Space Station

• The Russian and the US space agencies have agreed to cooperate on jointly sending crews to the International Space Station (ISS) until at least 2025.
• The so-called cross-flights — which involve sending one US astronaut as part of the crew of a Russian spacecraft and one Russian cosmonaut as part of an American crew — were extended “to maintain the reliability of the ISS operation,”.

ABOUT ISS

• International Space Station (ISS) is a large spacecraft around Earth which serves as a home for crews of astronauts and cosmonauts.
• European Space Agency, United States (NASA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (Roscosmos) are key partners for ISS.
• ISS was taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually built-in orbit.
• First module named Zarya (translates to “sunrise”) was launched in 1998.
• The ISS was designed to perform microgravity and space environment experiments.
• It orbits the Earth at an average altitude of 400 kilometers (250 miles).
• It needs just some 93 minutes to circle the globe, completing 5 orbits per day.
• It helps in critical research in fluids, combustion, life support systems and radiation environment that could not be done anywhere else.