The Most Fascinating Findings After A Quarter Century of Science within the ISS

The International Space Station lately celebrated a cosmic milestone—internet hosting area vacationers continuous for 1 / 4 of a century. In 1998, the ISS was launched as a state-of-the-art analysis facility among the many stars. Since then, the station has welcomed greater than 280 folks from 26 international locations, together with butterflies, rodents, and fruit flies, amongst different creatures.

While aboard, astronauts have performed thousands of research, from monitoring area’s results on the human physique to exploring the bizarreness of the quantum realm. Here are among the most essential findings that emerged aboard the ISS, benefiting each area exploration and our terrestrial lives.

The microgravity within the orbiting ISS affords a singular alternative for drug improvement, researchers on the area station have discovered. On Earth, gravity can hinder the exact processes concerned in rising intricate protein crystals inside life-saving medication. In area, these can develop extra evenly, and infrequently greater. Pharmaceutical corporations have collaborated with scientists aboard the ISS to reap the benefits of these circumstances. For instance, experiments with the most cancers drug pembrolizumab on the ISS illuminated methods to enhance the remedy’s manufacturing on Earth, enabling it to be delivered as an injection—quite than a gradual intravenous transfusion—to make life simpler for sufferers and caregivers.

In the mini fridge-sized ISS Cold Atom Lab, scientists concocted the unusual fifth state of matter—Bose-Einstein condensates, which had been first glimpsed in 1995 however predicted by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose a century in the past. In this type of matter, tremendous chilly clouds of atoms “coalesce, overlap and become synchronized like dancers in a chorus line,” according to NASA. These frosty atoms—as chilly as one ten billionth of a level above absolute zero—are simpler to check in area, with out the affect of terrestrial gravity. “Waves” of Bose-Einstein condensates might finally energy devices that decide up alerts from mysterious phenomena reminiscent of darkish vitality and gravitational waves.

Much work on the ISS probes a essential query: How do human our bodies fare over lengthy durations spent in microgravity? Scientists aboard the area station have gleaned loads of insights over the previous twenty years. For instance, one examine in contrast astronaut Scott Kelly’s well being as he spent almost a yr aboard the ISS to that of his twin Mark Kelly on Earth. Scott’s physique mass shrank by 7 p.c, his eyeball form shifted, and he skilled modifications in gene expression, among other findings reported by NASA in 2019. For a better have a look at the impacts of spaceflight on particular person organs, researchers have created chips that incorporate dwelling cells to “mimic complex functions of specific human tissues and organs.” Close examine of those chips aids within the hunt for medication that may cut back the opposed well being results of extended area journey, and these insights might additionally inform the remedy of age-related circumstances on Earth.

If we’re going to ship folks on more and more prolonged missions to the moon and past, they’re going to want some grub. Since 2015, NASA scientists have been creating the Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System, which was examined on the ISS. This is a passive set-up that doesn’t require any electrical energy. Water and vitamins repeatedly stream into crops via a capillary-like wicking materials, leading to progress that would provide a gradual provide of wholesome produce for cosmic explorers. Water can also be a essential useful resource for spacefarers—to ensure astronauts have a gradual provide, NASA has recovered ingesting water from astronauts’ pee on the ISS.

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Lead picture: NASA

• Molly Glick

  Posted on November 3, 2025

  Molly Glick is the publication editor of Nautilus.