“Monday, May 16, 2016, at 06:10 at GMT, the ISS will begin its 100,000th orbit as it crosses the equator”, Williams said in a video, calling the feat a “significant milestone”.
Advertisement
A few hours after the station reached this morning’s orbital benchmark, a several types of Cubesats were deployed from the Kibo lab module’s airlock. NASA said these 100,000 orbits are akin to traveling more than 2.6 billion miles.
Ever since then, the orbiting lab has been zooming around Earth at 17,500 mph (28,164 km/h), completing one lap every 90 minutes or so at an altitude of about 240 miles (386 kilometers).
In total, there have been 47 permanent crews representing the US, Russian, Canadian, Japanese and European space agencies.
Between three and six astronauts call it their home at any one time, and each expedition arrives aboard the Soyuz spacecraft, which also transports equipment and supplies.
On board of the International Space Stations remains following astronauts and cosmonauts: Timothy Peake (ESA, UK), Timothy Kopra, Jeff Williams (NASA, USA), cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, Oleg Skripochka, Alexey Ovchinin (Roscosmos, Russia).
“One-hundred-thousand orbits, the journey continues”.
The ISS is scheduled to keep flying through 2024, though NASA and its global partners are considering extending the orbiting outpost’s lifetime through 2028.
Advertisement
Maxim Matyushin, the head of Russian mission control, also praised the ISS as a “vivid example of real and effective global cooperation” to “carry out really large breakthrough projects that are crucial for the whole of civilization”. The first ISS module launched in 1998 on a Russian rocket, with more pieces added over time.
