ISS 3 minutes talk

Hello everyone, I'm going to tell you about the International Space Station. In 1983, US President Ronald Reagan initiated the ambitious project to build a space station in low Earth orbit. The aim was to install a crew to carry out scientific research in a space environment. The International Space Station was born of the collaboration of fifteen countries, linked by an intergovernmental agreement: the United States, which is the main funder, Russia, Canada, Japan and eleven European countries, including France. The ISS was originally the result of the merger of three projects: the American Freedom Station, the Soviet Mir 2 Station and the European Columbus laboratory. In-orbit assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) began in 1998. It was not completed until 13 years later, after some 40 flights to transport the components needed for its construction. The main reasons for this delay were budget cuts and the accident involving the US shuttle Columbia, which killed seven astronauts in 2003. The total cost of building the ISS was around $150 billion. The ISS is the largest artificial object orbiting the Earth at an altitude of between 350 and 400 km, measuring 110 m in length, 74 m in width and 30 m in height, with a mass of 420 tonnes. It is also powered by 2500 square metres of solar panels. The station has been permanently inhabited since 2000 by astronauts of 19 different nationalities who reach the ISS on board the Russian Soyuz rocket, which is now replaced by rockets from the private American company SpaceX, owned by the multi-billionaire Elon Musk. In the station, each astronaut's mission is to carry out assembly and maintenance operations for the station, as well as scientific experiments that are carried out in microgravity conditions. These experiments are mainly devoted to biology, materials science, astronomy and meteorology and have led to advances in cancer treatments. The station is also used to study the effects of weightlessness on astronauts with a view to multi-year space travel, which could, for example, send people to Mars. Finally, some of the modules of the International Space Station are at the end of their lives and the question arises as to the future of the station, which could soon be dismantled, even though its life span has been extended to 2028 by the various space agencies.

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