Terrific Thursday!

Hi everyone,
I'm back again with my next write up. As usual, I've been bombarding myself studying about space. This time, I have been researching about the International Space Station. I haven't written my essay yet, but I'll just post what I found.. I use Wikipedia, but if anyone has any other encyclopedias that I don't know of, just post them in the comments. I'm only going to post part of it, so.... here goes:


The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in space. The on-orbit assembly of ISS began in 1998. The space station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye: it has an altitude of approximately 350 km (217 mi)[1] above the surface of the Earth, and travels at an average speed of 27,700 km (17,210 statute miles) per hour, completing 15.77 orbits per day.
The ISS is a joint project among the space agencies of the United States (NASA), Russia (RKA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and eleven European countries (ESA).[4] The Brazilian Space Agency (AEB, Brazil) participates through a separate contract with NASA. The Italian Space Agency similarly has separate contracts for various activities not done in the framework of ESA's ISS works (where Italy also fully participates). China has reportedly expressed interest in the project,[5] especially if it is able to work with the RKA,[6] though the Chinese are currently not involved.[5]

That's only part of what I read, but if you want to read the full thing, here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station