Space station

Space stations spacecraft, which mostly are in the orbit of a celestial body and enable people to live a long time on them. They are, as they themselves do not have a drive for locomotion or landing devices, dependent on space vehicles for transport. In addition to the space stations space laboratories are used, which are a sub-form of the space station.

Problems

Technically challenging the operation of a space station is mainly the supply of the crew. Due to the high cost of transport systems had to be developed that allow the operation of a space station largely self-sufficient, ie in a closed circuit. Great strides were achieved especially in the treatment of water and air.

The orbit around the Earth is not stable at 300 km altitude, since a very thin atmosphere, the space stations constantly decelerates. Without regular boost in higher orbits space stations would therefore enter the Earth's atmosphere after a few months or years. The gravitational other celestial bodies could disturb the orbit of a space station. Therefore, space stations require constant care, especially of fuel for course correction.

The space stations in detail

The first space station Salyut 1 in 1971 was the Soviet space stations One of the most important was the Soviet station Mir, which was almost 15 years developed and used step by step. With the ISS today is permanently manned in international cooperation a space station.

So far, twelve space stations were brought into orbit, of which ten were manned:

* As of April 8, 2014

Planned space stations

The in June 2012 with Shenzhou 9 for the first time manned space station Tiangong 1 will follow according to the planning of the Chinese Space Agency CNSA building on the experience gained 2014-2016 Tiangong 2 and Tiangong 3.

Possible future development

Future space stations could be positioned farther away from the earth in one of the Lagrange points of the Earth- Moon system. The Lagrange points L4 and L5 allow the space station a much more stable orbit, which would greatly reduce the necessary course corrections and thus fuel consumption. However, the intensity of cosmic rays at a greater distance from the Earth is much greater, because there is lacking the protection of the Earth's magnetic field. So for such a space station, it would be necessary to take special precautions for radiation protection.

A possible concept for future space stations would be, for example, the O'Neill colonies.