Five cool facts about the International Space Station you never heard of!

1. The International Space Station (ISS) is possibly the most complex engineering project ever built in history. Sixteen nations were involved in the construction of the ISS - The United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. 

2. The first mission to the ISS was on 2nd November, 2000 and since then it has been continuously occupied. 70 manned missions on Space Shuttles and Soyuz spacecraft have flown to the ISS; while over 60 unmanned vehicles have docked with the station.

3. The ISS has 32,333 cubic feet of pressurized volume and weighs 930,000 pounds. It is travelling around 17,500 miles per hour and orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. According to NASA, the ISS, on average, sees 16 sunrises and sunsets per 24 hours.

4. Oxygen in the ISS comes from a process called ‘electrolysis,’ which involves using an electrical current generated from the station’s solar panels to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas.

5. The ISS is the single most expensive and largest manned object ever built. The cost is said to be estimated at over $120 billion! Roughly, half of the total price was contributed by the USA and the rest by other nations including Europe, Japan and Russia.