Four random facts about the ISS

The last few days for some reason I've gotten random questions popping in my mind about the International Space Station. Curious as anybody, I went to search answers to my questions and learned a great deal about the ISS.

Image: pixabay.com
So far I've learned the following:

1. The temperature in the International Space Station is a challenging thing to balance. The side facing the Sun is boiling (121C / Finnish sauna competition) while the side away from the Sun is freezing with -157C / -250F. Inside the station temperature is around 24C / 75F and the design for insulation bearing things such as radiation in mind is a complicated process. Read more here.

2. There is a webpage with information about the people that currently are in space. At the moment there are six people at the International Space Station: Peggy Whitson (US), Oleg Novitskiy (Russia), Thomas Pesquet (France), Andrei Borisenko (Russia), Sergei Ryzhikov (Russia) and Shane Kimbrough (US). In a decade this number hopefully will look a lot different and at one point we'll simply lose track.

3. There are photos of the ISS that were taken from the ground. In one of them you can even see the famous round cupola windows.

Image: pixabay.com


4. There is a webpage that will show you where exactly the ISS is right now. It's fascinating to look at. It's orbiting over 400km / 258mi and it's currently moving 7664 meters per second or 4762 miles / s.

To me these were such fascinating facts to learn that I thought I just better type them down for myself to remember, and for those with similar interests.

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