This text was initially revealed at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to House.com’s Skilled Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The Worldwide House Station is likely one of the most outstanding achievements of the trendy age. It’s the largest, most advanced, costliest and most sturdy spacecraft ever constructed.
Its first modules were launched in 1998. The primary crew to stay on the Worldwide House Station – an American and two Russians – entered it in 2000. Nov. 2, 2025, marks 25 years of steady habitation by no less than two folks, and as many as 13 at one time. It’s a singular instance of worldwide cooperation that has stood the take a look at of time.
Two hundred and ninety people from 26 countries have now visited the area station, a number of of them staying for a yr or extra. Greater than 40% of all of the people who’ve ever been to area have been Worldwide House Station guests.
The station has been the locus of thousands of scientific and engineering studies utilizing nearly 200 distinct scientific amenities, investigating the whole lot from astronomical phenomena and fundamental physics to crew health and plant growth. The phenomenon of space tourism was born on the space station. Altogether, astronauts have gathered nearly 127 person-years of expertise on the station, and a deep understanding of what it takes to stay in low Earth orbit.
If you happen to’ve ever seen photos of the inside of the International Space Station, you’ve got in all probability observed the litter. There are cables in every single place. Tools stands proud into corridors. It doesn’t appear like Star Trek’s Enterprise or different science fiction spacecraft. There’s no bathe for the crew, or a kitchen for cooking a meal from scratch. It doesn’t have an space designed for the crew to collect of their downtime. However even with out these niceties, it clearly represents a imaginative and prescient of the long run from the previous, one the place humanity would stay completely in area for the primary time.
Space archaeology
November 2025, by coincidence, also marks the 10th anniversary of my team’s research on the space station, the International Space Station Archaeological Project. The lengthy historical past of habitation on the area station makes it good for the form of research that archaeologists like my colleagues and me perform.
We acknowledged that there had been hardly any analysis on the social and cultural features of life in area. We wished to point out area companies that have been already planning three-year missions to Mars what they have been overlooking.
We wished to transcend simply speaking to the crew about their experiences, although now we have additionally performed that. However as previous studies of contemporary societies have shown, folks typically do not wish to talk about all their lives with researchers, or they’re unable to articulate all their experiences.
Astronauts on Earth are often attempting to get their subsequent journey again to area, they usually understandably do not wish to rock the boat. Our analysis offers a further window onto life on an area station through the use of archaeological proof: the traces of human interactions with the objects and constructed areas of the location.
The issue, in fact, is that we won’t go to the station and observe it immediately. So we needed to give you different methods to seize information. In November 2015, I noticed that we may use the thousands of photos taken by the crew and published by NASA as a place to begin. These would enable us to trace the motion of individuals and issues across the web site over time, and to map the behaviors and associations between them.
In 2022, the Worldwide House Station Archaeological Venture additionally carried out the first archaeological fieldwork off the Earth, an experiment designed by my collaborator, Alice Gorman. We requested the crew to doc six pattern places in numerous modules by taking photographs of every one every single day for 2 months.
Lessons from photos
We learned that the crew of the International Space Station is a lot like those of us on Earth – perhaps unsurprising, since they live 95% or more of their lives here with the rest of us. They decorate the walls of the station with photos, memorabilia and, on the Russian aspect, non secular gadgets, the way in which you would possibly put photographs and souvenirs in your fridge door to say one thing about your self and your loved ones. They make birthday cakes for their colleagues. They like to snack on sweet or different particular meals that they chose to be despatched.
Not like the remainder of us, nonetheless, they stay without much freedom to make choices about their lives. Their days are ruled by prolonged procedures overseen by Mission Management, and by lists of things and their places.
Crew members do present some indicators of autonomy, although. They generally create new uses for different areas. They used a upkeep work station for the storage of all types of unrelated issues, simply because it has a variety of Velcro for holding gadgets in place. They must give you options for storing their toiletry kits as a result of that form of affordance wasn’t thought of obligatory by the station’s designers 30 or 40 years in the past.
We found that regardless of the worldwide nature of the station, most areas of it are highly nationalized, with every area company controlling its personal modules and, typically, the actions occurring in each. This is smart, since every company is accountable to their very own taxpayers and wishes to point out how their cash is being spent. Nevertheless it in all probability is not probably the most environment friendly technique to run what’s the costliest constructing challenge within the historical past of humanity.
In our newest analysis, we tracked changes in scientific activity, which we discovered has change into more and more various, by documenting using specialised experimental gear. This work was the results of questions from one of many corporations competing to construct a commercial successor to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.
The corporate wished to know if we may inform them what amenities their clients have been possible going to want. After all, understanding how folks have used completely different elements of a web site over time is a typical archaeological downside. They’re utilizing our outcomes to enhance the experiences of their crews.
The archaeology of the contemporary world
Similar archaeological studies of contemporary issues here on Earth can also make future lives better, whether by studying phenomena such as migration, ethnonationalism or ecological issues.
On this method, we and different modern archaeologists are charting a brand new future for learning the previous, a path for our self-discipline that lies alongside our conventional work of investigating historical societies and managing heritage assets. Our Worldwide House Station work additionally demonstrates the relevance of social science analysis for fixing all types of issues – even ones that appear to be purely technical, like dwelling in area.
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