the International Space Station celebrates its 25th anniversary

The International Space Station is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, a record longevity which testifies to a scientific feat and a rare understanding between major world powers.

It has been orbiting 400 kilometers above our heads for a quarter of a century: the International Space Station (ISS) celebrates its 25th anniversary on Monday, November 20. The result of unprecedented international cooperation, this station remains today the symbol of joint scientific work between great powers, for another ten years.

The project was born in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan launched the construction of an American space station, wanted alongside partners from the “free world”: Europe, Japan, Canada. The USSR, for its part, is working on an equivalent, deployed in space from 1986, the MIR station. In November 1989, the fall of the Wall changed the situation. The USSR is no more and Russia becomes a partner to be associated with. The agreement was sealed in 1994 and on November 20, 1998 the Zarya module took off from Baikonur, the first from this now international station.

“A project of friendship of peoples”

Astronaut Philipe Perrin took part in this project during a mission in 2002. “I experienced it as a project of friendship between peoples, he says. During the Iron Curtain era, I was a fighter pilot and my enemy was Russia. In the early 2000s, I found myself creating this station with test pilots who came from the USSR, so we thought we were moving towards a better world. This station was this better world.” A better world which has been embodied since 2011 through this housing and science platform: 110 meters long, 74 wide, more than 400 tonnes and 250 astronauts of around twenty nationalities on board.

Since February 2022, the war in Ukraine has led to the cessation of most scientific cooperation with Moscow, but the ISS is resisting. And even if the conquest of space is once again written at the point of the flag, the technological feat will remain. “A habitable element that remains in orbit for 25 years, we exceed all records, analyzes Olivier Sanguy, from the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse. It’s still a huge success and great progress. If one day we want to go to Mars, we must consider habitats over years. And there we have an irreplaceable experience.” The International Space Station will end its life dismantled and burned up in the atmosphere around 2030.