The International Space Station turns 20
As children, we all learned of Sputnik, the artificial satellite launched into a low earth orbit on October 4, 1957, by the then USSR, thus beginning the entry of humans into space. The US responded with the launch of Explorer 1 a few months later on January 1, 1958, starting the Cold-War Space-Race.
Subsequently, a number of artificial satellites were launched to serve as technological and scientific laboratories as well as for political and military purposes. I remember the infamous Skylab, which was a source of both thrill and fear to me as a child because it had been damaged and was going to “fall on our heads and destroy the Earth”. Skylab was in-service from 1973 to 1979 and I was perversely disappointed when it disintegrated after re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and did not cause any damage to us mere mortals.
This was followed by Mir, the Soviet (and subsequently Russian) Space Station that orbited the Earth from 1986 to 2001.
In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched and still remains in orbit. It has presented us with some of the most amazing and detailed images ever, increasing our understanding of space and time. The telescope helped astrophysicists accurately determine the rate of the expansion of the Universe. It has had to have a few fixes now and then — the most recent one just last month (October…
