ISS is a busy place these days, though the busiest schedule departed with the departure of Discovery space shuttle however, the three residents of the International Space Station spent a busy week unpacking, inventorying and stowing more than two tons of equipment and supplies left by the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Surely, this is not the great news you are looking for but the great news is Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin passed a milestone of their stay on the station on Tuesday — it was their 100th day in space and what makes it even greater is that we can’t see the comments of the ISS critics who always raised doubts and asked for justification for the ISS endeavor. Surely someone must be thinking ... but wait, before you can even think of something critical just go through the paragraph that follows.
Scientists want to use the ISS to study the long-term effects of prolonged space life on the human body. And keeping this in view, scientific activities picked up again on the station since the departure of the STS-116 crew. During the week, crewmembers worked on experiments analyzing heart function during long-duration spaceflight, measuring cosmic rays, and examining plant growth and changes in blood of long-duration spacefarers. They also continued a Nutritional Status Assessment. Crewmembers also performed required station maintenance and did their daily 2.5 hours of exercise, designed to mitigate some of the negative effects of lengthy space flights. And not only this politically ISS has strengthened the relationship between Russia and the West.
As the doubts are only raised that where is the science going on the, now $ 100 billion project. Critics say that the ISS is too expensive and that most of the experiments could be conducted more cheaply in remote-controlled, unmanned operations. These critics, I guess are the people who think that if we start landing men on the Moon, on Mars and in space stations - people may actually start thinking we can achieve great things on earth as well and this is where the dangerous comments come up , BAN IT ALL CALL IT OFF. However, what they need to know is that money that would be “saved” if this program didn’t exist would not necessarily be funneled to solving the misery of the world.
Via: Sciencedaily
