Space station
우주정거장
A facility in Earth orbit where people stay for months at a time to do experiments and work.
Overview
The best-known one is the International Space Station (ISS). The United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada built it together, launching the first part in 1998 and joining the pieces one by one. It circles the Earth about every 90 minutes at a height of about 400 km, and people have lived on it without a break since November 2000.
It is about the size of a football field, and it hosts experiments that can only be done in an environment where you feel almost no weight. It also studies how the human body changes in space. China runs its own station called Tiangong, and several companies are preparing private space stations to follow.
An everyday example
It is like a science base in Antarctica. People take turns staying in a place that is hard to live in, and do research that can only be done there.
Why it matters
It is where people learn how to live in space for a long time before going to the Moon and Mars. As the ISS ages, private stations taking its place are seen as the next big change in the space industry.