The Sundarban 
The International Space Home will most likely be decommissioned soon.
(Image credit score: NASA)
This text was once originally published at The Dialog. The newsletter contributed the article to Space.com’s Professional Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The International Space Home is one of the most distinguished achievements of the contemporary age. It is the finest, most complex, most dear and most durable spacecraft ever built.
Its first modules had been launched in 1998. The first crew to stay on the International Space Home – an American and two Russians – entered it in 2000. Nov. 2, 2025, marks 25 years of continuous habitation by now now not now now not as a lot as 2 people, and as many as 13 at one time. It is miles a singular instance of international cooperation that has stood the take a look at of time.
Two hundred and ninety people from 26 international locations relish now visited the space dwelling, a number of of them staying for a 365 days or extra. Larger than 40% of all the people who relish ever been to space had been International Space Home guests.
The dwelling has been the locus of thousands of scientific and engineering experiences using nearly 200 distinct scientific facilities, investigating everything from mammoth phenomena and general physics to crew effectively being and plant increase. The phenomenon of space tourism was once born on the space dwelling. Altogether, astronauts relish accumulated nearly 127 individual-years of ride on the dwelling, and a deep understanding of what it takes to stay in low Earth orbit.
Even as you happen to can also relish got ever seen photos of the inside of the International Space Home, that you may perchance additionally relish got doubtlessly noticed the litter. There are cables in every single procedure. Equipment sticks out into corridors. It doesn’t locate indulge in Famous individual Jog’s Undertaking or other science fiction spacecraft. There’s no shower for the crew, or a kitchen for cooking a meal from scratch. It doesn’t relish an space designed for the crew to gather in their downtime. But even without these niceties, it clearly represents a imaginative and prescient of the future from the past, one where humanity would stay completely in space for the first time.
Space archaeology
November 2025, by coincidence, additionally marks the 10th anniversary of my team’s be taught on the space dwelling, the International Space Home Archaeological Project. The long history of habitation on the space dwelling makes it finest for the kind of experiences that archaeologists indulge in my colleagues and me obtain.
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We known that there had been infrequently any be taught on the social and cultural substances of life in space. We wished to point to space businesses that had been already planning three-365 days missions to Mars what they had been overlooking.
We wished to switch beyond just talking to the crew about their experiences, though we relish additionally executed that. But as previous experiences of contemporary societies relish shown, people often fabricate now now not would prefer to discuss all their lives with researchers, or they’re unable to say all their experiences.
Astronauts on Earth are usually trying to fetch their subsequent hurry support to space, and they understandably fabricate now now not would prefer to rock the boat. Our be taught offers a further window onto life on a space dwelling by using archaeological proof: the traces of human interactions with the objects and built spaces of the dwelling.
The discipline, of route, is that we are able to’t bolt to the dwelling and see it straight. So we needed to give you other ways to capture data. In November 2015, I noticed that we are able to also use the thousands of photos taken by the crew and published by NASA as a starting point. These would permit us to trace the motion of people and things spherical the dwelling over time, and to design the behaviors and associations between them.
In 2022, the International Space Home Archaeological Project additionally performed the first archaeological fieldwork off the Earth, an experiment designed by my collaborator, Alice Gorman. We requested the crew to file six pattern areas in assorted modules by taking photos of one and all each day for two months.
What’s it will like to stay aboard the ISS? (Image credit score: NASA)Classes from photos
We realized that the crew of the International Space Home is loads indulge in these of us on Earth – in all probability unsurprising, since they stay 95% or extra of their lives here with the relaxation of us. They adorn the partitions of the dwelling with photos, memorabilia and, on the Russian aspect, religious objects, the procedure that you may perchance additionally build photos and souvenirs to your refrigerator door to relate something about your self and your household. They fabricate birthday truffles for their colleagues. They would prefer to snack on candy or other special foods that they selected to be despatched.
Unlike the relaxation of us, on the other hand, they stay without distinguished freedom to fabricate choices about their lives. Their days are governed by lengthy procedures overseen by Mission Maintain an eye on, and by lists of objects and their areas.
Crew members attain point to some of indicators of autonomy, though. They usually build fresh uses for assorted areas. They used a maintenance work dwelling for the storage of all kinds of unrelated things, just because it has loads of Velcro for holding objects in procedure. They resolve on to give you solutions for storing their toiletry kits because that kind of affordance wasn’t concept about needed by the dwelling’s designers 30 or 40 years in the past.
We found that despite the international nature of the dwelling, most areas of it are extremely nationalized,
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