ABSTRACT: While the astronauts study and experiment, you'll have the chance to hide and seek within the International Space Station, to the discovery of the most complex engineering project ever built by humankind.

click image to open virtual tour

Joint project developed among several space agencies - such as NASA, RKA, CSA, ESA and JAXA -, the International Space Station is today open to visitors in a virtual tour which uncovers every detail connected either to the most expensive object ever built by humankind (yes, the ISS is worth US$ 156 billion!), or the most complex engineering project, which uses mixed equipment coming from all around the world.
Continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000, the International Space station provides a permanent human presence in space, meanwhile being the destination for those willing to pay enormous amounts of money to spend some time in our...solar system as tourists.

The base has been used already for several expeditions, and the 16th is currently taking place, in order to study the long term effects to humans and to machines of space's harsh environment. The aims can be summarized as being the study of living and working in space for an extended period of time and the study of how to work in space, in order to be able to build the next generation's spacecrafts so to expand human presence across the solar system, to return to the Moon and to start long term explorations of our galaxy.
Apart from maintaining the station, the crews have other tasks, which are accomplished within laboratories in the ISS. The crews are involved in physical, biological and scientific experiments, to monitor the effects of the space on health, meanwhile studying how to make life's support system less dependent from Earth.
In this tour, you will have to chance to see how and where the astronauts live, the several modules which compose the station, from Columbus to Kibo, from Destiny Lab to Zvezda. You will learn about the tasks performed within every module, how they were built and why, and you will learn about life within the station, how the astronauts eat, exercise and sleep. The only thing you won't experience (we're sorry about that!) is zero gravity! Well...maybe I should correct the statement, since the tour behaves in a quite strange way and doesn't seem to be influenced too much by Newton's Laws. Enjoy!

click image to open virtual tour

click image to open virtual tour

Links:
ISS web site
ISS Virtual Tour

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