The image above contains clickable links
The image above contains clickable links
Size comparisons between current and past space stations as they appeared most recently. Solar panels in blue, heat radiators in red. Stations have different depths not shown by silhouettes.

A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew in orbit for an extended period of time and is therefore a type of space habitat. It lacks major propulsion or landing systems. An orbital station or an orbital space station is an artificial satellite (i.e., a type of orbital spaceflight). Stations must have docking ports to allow other spacecraft to dock to transfer crew and supplies. The purpose of maintaining an orbital outpost varies depending on the program. Space stations have most often been launched for scientific purposes, but military launches have also occurred.

Space stations have harboured so far the only long-duration direct human presence in space. After the first station, Salyut 1 (1971), and the deaths of its Soyuz 11 crew, space stations have been operated consecutively since Skylab (1973), having allowed a progression of long-duration direct human presence in space. Stations have been occupied by consecutive crews since 1987 with the Salyut successor Mir. Uninterrupted occupation of stations has been achieved since the operational transition from the Mir to the ISS, with its first occupation in 2000.

The ISS has hosted the highest number of people in orbit at the same time, reaching 13 for the first time during the eleven day docking of STS-127 in 2009. On May 30, 2023 there were 11 people on the ISS and 6 on China's TSS: with a total of 17 people in orbit, it set the record for most people in orbit as of 2023.[1]

As of 2024, there are two fully operational space stations in low Earth orbit (LEO) – the International Space Station (ISS) and China's Tiangong Space Station (TSS). The ISS has been permanently inhabited since October 2000 with the Expedition 1 crews and the TSS began continuous inhabitation with the Shenzhou 14 crews in June 2022. These stations are used to study the effects of spaceflight on the human body, as well as to provide a location to conduct a greater number and longer length of scientific studies than is possible on other space vehicles. In 2022, the TSS finished its phase 1 construction with the addition of two lab modules: Wentian ("Quest for the Heavens"), launched on 24 July 2022, and Mengtian ("Dreaming of the Heavens") launched on 31 October 2022, joining the ISS as the most recent space station operating in orbit. In July 2022, Russia announced intentions to withdraw from the ISS after 2024 in order to build its own space station.[2] There have been numerous decommissioned space stations, including the USSR's Salyuts and Mir, NASA's Skylab, and China's Tiangong 1 and Tiangong 2.

History

Starting with the ill-fated flight of the Soyuz 11 crew to Salyut 1, all recent human spaceflight duration records have been set aboard space stations. The duration record for a single spaceflight is 437.75 days, set by Valeri Polyakov aboard Mir from 1994 to 1995.[3] As of 2021, four cosmonauts have completed single missions of over a year, all aboard Mir. The last military-use space station was the Soviet Salyut 5, which was launched under the Almaz program and orbited between 1976 and 1977.[4][5][6]

Early concepts

The first mention of anything resembling a space station occurred in Edward Everett Hale's 1869 "The Brick Moon".[7] The first to give serious, scientifically grounded consideration to space stations were Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth about two decades apart in the early 20th century.[8] In 1929, Herman Potočnik's The Problem of Space Travel was published, the first to envision a "rotating wheel" space station to create artificial gravity.[7] Conceptualized during the Second World War, the "sun gun" was a theoretical orbital weapon orbiting Earth at a height of 8,200 kilometres (5,100 mi). No further research was ever conducted.[9] In 1951, Wernher von Braun published a concept for a rotating wheel space station in Collier's Weekly, referencing Potočnik's idea. However, development of a rotating station was never begun in the 20th century.[8]

First advances and precursors

The first human flew to space and concluded the first orbit on April 12, 1961 with Vostok 1.

The Apollo program had in its early planning instead of a lunar landing a crewed lunar orbital flight and an orbital laboratory station in orbit of Earth, at times called Project Olympus, as two different possible program goals, until the Kennedy administration sped ahead and made the Apollo program focus on what was originally planned to come after it, the lunar landing. The Project Olympus space station, or orbiting laboratory of the Apollo program, was proposed as an in-space unfolded structure with the Apollo command and service module docking.[10] While never realized, the Apollo command and service module would performe docking maneuvers and eventually become a lunar orbiting module which was used for station-like purposes.

But before that the Gemini program paved the way and achieved the first space rendezvous with Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 in 1965.

This section is an excerpt from Space rendezvous § First docking.[edit]
Gemini 8 Agena target vehicle
Gemini 8 docking with the Agena in March 1966

The first docking of two spacecraft was achieved on March 16, 1966 when Gemini 8, under the command of Neil Armstrong, rendezvoused and docked with an uncrewed Agena Target Vehicle. Gemini 6 was to have been the first docking mission, but had to be cancelled when that mission's Agena vehicle was destroyed during launch.[11]

The Soviets carried out the first automated, uncrewed docking between Cosmos 186 and Cosmos 188 on October 30, 1967.[12]

The first Soviet cosmonaut to attempt a manual docking was Georgy Beregovoy who unsuccessfully tried to dock his Soyuz 3 craft with the uncrewed Soyuz 2 in October 1968. He was able to bring his craft from 200 meters (660 ft) to as close as 30 centimetres (1 ft), but was unable to dock before exhausting his maneuvering fuel.

The first successful crewed docking[13] occurred on January 16, 1969 when Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 docked, collecting the two crew members of Soyuz 5, which had to perform an extravehicular activity to reach Soyuz 4.[14]

In March 1969 Apollo 9 achieved the first internal transfer of crew members between two docked spacecraft.

The first rendezvous of two spacecraft from different countries took place in 1975, when an Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Apollo–Soyuz mission.[15]

The first multiple space docking took place when both Soyuz 26 and Soyuz 27 were docked to the Salyut 6 space station during January 1978.

Salyut, Almaz and Skylab

The U.S. Skylab station of the 1970s

In 1971, the Soviet Union developed and launched the world's first space station, Salyut 1.[16] The Almaz and Salyut series were eventually joined by Skylab, Mir, and Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2. The hardware developed during the initial Soviet efforts remains in use, with evolved variants comprising a considerable part of the ISS, orbiting today. Each crew member stays aboard the station for weeks or months but rarely more than a year.

Early stations were monolithic designs that were constructed and launched in one piece, generally containing all their supplies and experimental equipment. A crew would then be launched to join the station and perform research. After the supplies had been used up, the station was abandoned.[16]

The first space station was Salyut 1, which was launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. The early Soviet stations were all designated "Salyut", but among these, there were two distinct types: civilian and military. The military stations, Salyut 2, Salyut 3, and Salyut 5, were also known as Almaz stations.[17]

The civilian stations Salyut 6 and Salyut 7 were built with two docking ports, which allowed a second crew to visit, bringing a new spacecraft with them; the Soyuz ferry could spend 90 days in space, at which point it needed to be replaced by a fresh Soyuz spacecraft.[18] This allowed for a crew to man the station continually. The American Skylab (1973–1979) was also equipped with two docking ports, like second-generation stations, but the extra port was never used. The presence of a second port on the new stations allowed Progress supply vehicles to be docked to the station, meaning that fresh supplies could be brought to aid long-duration missions. This concept was expanded on Salyut 7, which "hard docked" with a TKS tug shortly before it was abandoned; this served as a proof of concept for the use of modular space stations. The later Salyuts may reasonably be seen as a transition between the two groups.[17]

Mir

Mir station seen in 1998

Unlike previous stations, the Soviet space station Mir had a modular design; a core unit was launched, and additional modules, generally with a specific role, were later added to that. This method allows for greater flexibility in operation, as well as removing the need for a single immensely powerful launch vehicle. Modular stations are also designed from the outset to have their supplies provided by logistical support craft, which allows for a longer lifetime at the cost of requiring regular support launches.[19]

International Space Station

View of the International Space Station in 2021

The ISS is divided into two main sections, the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) and the US Orbital Segment (USOS). The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was launched in 1998.[20]

The Russian Orbital Segment's "second-generation" modules were able to launch on Proton, fly to the correct orbit, and dock themselves without human intervention.[21] Connections are automatically made for power, data, gases, and propellants. The Russian autonomous approach allows the assembly of space stations prior to the launch of crew.

The Russian "second-generation" modules are able to be reconfigured to suit changing needs. As of 2009, RKK Energia was considering the removal and reuse of some modules of the ROS on the Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex after the end of mission is reached for the ISS.[22] However, in September 2017, the head of Roscosmos said that the technical feasibility of separating the station to form OPSEK had been studied, and there were now no plans to separate the Russian segment from the ISS.[23]

In contrast, the main US modules launched on the Space Shuttle and were attached to the ISS by crews during EVAs. Connections for electrical power, data, propulsion, and cooling fluids are also made at this time, resulting in an integrated block of modules that is not designed for disassembly and must be deorbited as one mass.[24]

The Axiom Orbital Segment is a planned commercial segment to be added to the ISS starting in the mid-2020s. Axiom Space gained NASA approval for the venture in January 2020. Up to three Axiom modules will attach to the International Space Station. The first module, Hab One, is expected to be launched at the end of 2026[25] and will be docked to the forward port of Harmony, requiring relocation of the PMA-2. Axiom Space plans to attach up to two additional modules to its first core module, and send private astronauts to inhabit the modules. The modules would later detach into the Axiom Station in a manner similar to Russia's proposed OPSEK.[26]

Tiangong program

Rendering of the completed Tiangong Space Station in November 2022
Rendering of the completed Tiangong Space Station in November 2022

China's first space laboratory, Tiangong-1 was launched in September 2011.[27] The uncrewed Shenzhou 8 then successfully performed an automatic rendezvous and docking in November 2011. The crewed Shenzhou 9 then docked with Tiangong-1 in June 2012, followed by the crewed Shenzhou 10 in 2013.

According to the China Manned Space Engineering Office, Tiangong-1 reentered over the South Pacific Ocean, northwest of Tahiti, on 2 April 2018 at 00:15 UTC.[28][29]

A second space laboratory Tiangong-2 was launched in September 2016, while a plan for Tiangong-3 was merged with Tiangong-2.[30] The station made a controlled reentry on 19 July 2019 and burned up over the South Pacific Ocean.[31]

The Tiangong Space Station (Chinese: 天宫; pinyin: Tiāngōng; lit. 'Heavenly Palace'), the first module of which was launched on 29 April 2021,[32] is in low Earth orbit, 340 to 450 kilometres above the Earth at an orbital inclination of 42° to 43°. Its planned construction via 11 total launches across 2021-22 is intended to extend the core module with two laboratory modules, capable of hosting up to six crew.[33][34]

Planned projects

This section is an excerpt from List of space stations § Planned and proposed.[edit]

These space stations have been announced by their host entity and are currently in planning, development or production. The launch date listed here may change as more information becomes available.

Name Entity Program Crew size Launch date Remarks
Lunar Gateway United States NASA
ESA
Canada CSA
Japan JAXA		 Artemis
4
 2025[35] Intended to serve as a science platform and as a staging area for the lunar landings of NASA's Artemis program and follow-on human mission to Mars.
Axiom Station United States Axiom Space
 International Space Station programme
TBD
 Late 2026[36] Eventually will detach from the ISS in the early 2030s and form a private, free flying space station for commercial tourism and science activities.
Russian Orbital Service Station
(ROSS)		 Russia Roscosmos Russia's next generation space station.
TBD
 2027[37] With Russia leaving the ISS programme in 2024, Roscosmos announced this new space station in April 2021 as the replacement for that program.
Starlab Space Station United States NanoRacks
United States Voyager Space
United States Lockheed Martin
Netherlands Airbus		 Private
4
 2028[38] "Commercial platform supporting a business designed to enable science, research, and manufacturing for customers around the world."
Orbital Reef United States Blue Origin
United States Sierra Space		 Private
10
 second half 2020s[39] "Commercial station in LEO for research, industrial, international, and commercial customers."
Bharatiya Antariksha Station[40] India ISRO Indian Human Spaceflight Programme
3
 ~2035[41][42][43][44][45] ISRO chairman K. Sivan announced in 2019 that India will not join the International Space Station, but will instead build a 20 ton space station of its own.[46] It is intended to be built 5–7 years after the conclusion of the Gaganyaan program.[47]
Lunar Orbital Station[48]
(LOS)		 Russia Roscosmos
TBD
 after 2030[49]
Haven-1 United States Vast Private
4
 2025[50] "Scheduled to be the world's first commercial space station, Haven-1 and subsequent human spaceflight missions will accelerate access to space exploration"[51]
LIFE Habitat Pathfinder United States Sierra Space Private
TBD
 2026 "Before offering LIFE for Orbital Reef, though, the company is proposing to launch a standalone “pathfinder” version of LIFE as soon as the end of 2026".[52]

Cancelled projects

This section is an excerpt from List of space stations § Cancelled projects.[edit]
A mockup of the inside of Skylab at the Smithsonian, based on the Skylab B module. In the center, a dummy dressed in a gold jumpsuit sits at a table. Behind him are white cabinets that hold the crews equipment. Off to the right, a porthole shows a view of the Smithsonian.
The interior of Skylab B, on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum

Most of these stations were canceled due to financial difficulties, or merged into other projects.

Name Entity Crew Cancellation Remarks
Manned Orbiting Laboratory 1–7 United States USAF 2[53] 1969 Boilerplate mission launched successfully, wider project cancelled due to excessive costs[54]
Skylab B United States NASA 3[55] 1976 Constructed, but launch cancelled due to lack of funding.[56] Now a museum piece.
OPS-4 Soviet Union USSR 3[57] 1979 Constructed, but Almaz program cancelled in favour of uncrewed recon satellites.
Freedom United States NASA 14–16[58] 1993 Merged to form the basis of the International Space Station.
Mir-2 Soviet Union USSR
Russia Roscosmos		 2[59]
Columbus MTFF ESA 3
Galaxy United States Bigelow Aerospace Robotic[60] 2007 Canceled due to rising costs and ability to ground test key Galaxy subsystems[61]
Sundancer 3 2011 Was under construction, but cancelled in favour of developing B330.
Almaz commercial United Kingdom Excalibur Almaz 4+ 2016 Soviet hardware was acquired, but never launched due to lack of funds.
Tiangong-3 China CNSA 3 2017 The goals for Tiangong-2 and 3 were merged, and were completed by a single station rather than two separate stations.
OPSEK Russia Roscosmos 2+ 2017 Some modules such as Nauka were launched and attached to the ISS- but proposals to split these off as a separate station were cancelled, and they instead remain part of the ISS.
B330 United States Bigelow Aerospace 3 2020 Test articles were constructed but not flight ready hardware; cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Architecture

Two types of space stations have been flown: monolithic and modular. Monolithic stations consist of a single vehicle and are launched by one rocket. Modular stations consist of two or more separate vehicles that are launched independently and docked on orbit. Modular stations are currently preferred due to lower costs and greater flexibility.[62][63]

A space station is a complex vehicle that must incorporate many interrelated subsystems, including structure, electrical power, thermal control, attitude determination and control, orbital navigation and propulsion, automation and robotics, computing and communications, environmental and life support, crew facilities, and crew and cargo transportation. Stations must serve a useful role, which drives the capabilities required.

Orbit and purpose

Materials

Space stations are made from durable materials that have to weather space radiation, internal pressure, micrometeoroids, and thermal effects of the sun and cold temperatures for very long periods of time. They are typically made from stainless steel, titanium and high-quality aluminum alloys, with layers of insulation such as Kevlar as a ballistics shield protection.[64]

The International Space Station has a single inflatable module, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, which was installed in April 2016 after being delivered to the ISS on the SpaceX CRS-8 resupply mission.[65][66] This module, based on NASA research in the 1990s, weighed 1,400 kilograms (3,100 lb) and was transported while compressed before being attached to the ISS by the space station arm and inflated to provide a 16 cubic metres (21 cu yd) volume. Whilst it was initially designed for a 2 year lifetime it was still attached and being used for storage in August 2022.[67][68]

Construction

Habitability

The space station environment presents a variety of challenges to human habitability, including short-term problems such as the limited supplies of air, water, and food and the need to manage waste heat, and long-term ones such as weightlessness and relatively high levels of ionizing radiation. These conditions can create long-term health problems for space-station inhabitants, including muscle atrophy, bone deterioration, balance disorders, eyesight disorders, and elevated risk of cancer.[69]

Future space habitats may attempt to address these issues, and could be designed for occupation beyond the weeks or months that current missions typically last. Possible solutions include the creation of artificial gravity by a rotating structure, the inclusion of radiation shielding, and the development of on-site agricultural ecosystems. Some designs might even accommodate large numbers of people, becoming essentially "cities in space" where people would reside semi-permanently.[70]

Molds that develop aboard space stations can produce acids that degrade metal, glass, and rubber. Despite an expanding array of molecular approaches for detecting microorganisms, rapid and robust means of assessing the differential viability of the microbial cells, as a function of phylogenetic lineage, remain elusive.[71]

Power

Like uncrewed spacecraft close to the Sun, space stations in the inner Solar System generally rely on solar panels to obtain power.[72]

Life support

Space station air and water is brought up in spacecraft from Earth before being recycled. Supplemental oxygen can be supplied by a solid fuel oxygen generator.[73]

Communications

Occupation

Space stations have harboured so far the only long-duration direct human presence in space. After the first station, Salyut 1 (1971), and its tragic Soyuz 11 crew, space stations have been operated consecutively since Skylab (1973-1974), having allowed a progression of long-duration direct human presence in space. Long-duration resident crews have been joined by visiting crews since 1977 (Salyut 6), and stations have been occupied by consecutive crews since 1987 with the Salyut successor Mir. Uninterrupted occupation of stations has been achieved since the operational transition from the Mir to the ISS, with its first occupation in 2000. The ISS has hosted the highest number of people in orbit at the same time, reaching 13 for the first time during the eleven day docking of STS-127 in 2009.[74]

Operations

Resupply and crew vehicles

Many spacecraft are used to dock with the space stations. Soyuz flight T-15 in March to July 1986 was the first and as of 2016, only spacecraft to visit two different space stations, Mir and Salyut 7.[75]

International Space Station

The International Space Station has been supported by many different spacecraft.

Tiangong space station

The Tiangong space station is supported by the following spacecraft:

Tiangong program

The Tiangong program relied on the following spacecraft.

Mir

The Mir space station was in orbit from 1986 to 2001 and was supported and visited by the following spacecraft:

Skylab

Salyut programme

Docking and berthing

Maintenance

Research

Research conducted on the Mir included the first long term space based ESA research project EUROMIR 95 which lasted 179 days and included 35 scientific experiments.[114]

During the first 20 years of operation of the International Space Station, there were around 3,000 scientific experiments in the areas of biology and biotech, technology development, educational activities, human research, physical science, and Earth and space science.[115][116]

Materials research

Space stations provide a useful platform to test the performance, stability, and survivability of materials in space. This research follows on from previous experiments such as the Long Duration Exposure Facility, a free flying experimental platform which flew from April 1984 until January 1990.[117][118]

Human research

Botany

Space tourism

On the International Space Station, guests sometimes pay $50 million to spend the week living as an astronaut. Later, space tourism is slated to expand once launch costs are lowered sufficiently. By the end of the 2020s, space hotels may become relatively common.

Finance

As it currently costs on average $10,000 to $25,000 per kilogram to launch anything into orbit, space stations remain the exclusive province of government space agencies, which are primarily funded via taxation. In the case of the International Space Station, space tourism makes up another chunk of money to run it.

Legacy

Technology spinoffs

International cooperation

Cultural impact

This section is an excerpt from Space stations and habitats in fiction.[edit]
"The Brick Moon" – an 1869 serial by Edward Everett Hale – was the first fictional space station or habitat.
The concepts of space stations and space habitats feature in science fiction. The difference between the two is that habitats are larger and more complex structures intended as permanent homes for substantial populations (though generation ships also fit this description, they are usually not considered space habitats as they are heading for a destination[123]), but the line between the two is fuzzy with significant overlap and the term space station is sometimes used for both concepts.[124][125] The first such artificial satellite in fiction was Edward Everett Hale's "The Brick Moon" in 1869,[124][126] a sphere of bricks 61 meters across accidentally launched into orbit around the Earth with people still onboard.[123][127]

Space habitat

See also

References

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