The International Space Station is 20 years old

ORLANDO, Florida – The International Space Station is 20 years old.

The construction of the marvel in orbit began with the launch of the Zarya Functional Cargo Block from Kazakhstan on November 20, 1998.

The temporary control module of the ISS took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome, the cargo of a Proton rocket. This was the cornerstone of many upcoming modules, including the Unity node that was evoked two weeks later on STS-88 by the Space Shuttle Endeavor crew.

While Zarya was launched by the Russian Space Agency, it was built by Boeing and the agency. The mating between Unity and Zarya was the first of many missions for what is now a structure with a pressurized module 240 feet long, a farm 357.5 feet long and a solar generator of 239.4 feet long which weighs 925,335 pounds with a living space of 13,696 cubic feet.

The current structure, or at least its main components, is courtesy of 42 assembly missions, including 37 of the space shuttle program.

The space station has a crew of six and more than 230 people from 18 countries. He has been busy continuously since November 2000.

Astronaut Peggy Whitson lived there the longest, at 665 days.

It has also hosted more than 2,500 scientific experiments from more than 100 countries.

The station runs around 240 miles above the Earth on average every 90 minutes at 5 miles per second.

After 20 years, more than 116,000 orbits and over 2.9 billion miles have been traveled.