25 Years on the ISS: What Archaeology Reveals About Living and Working in Orbit

25 Years on the ISS: What Archaeology Reveals About Living and Working in Orbit

The International Space Station (ISS) is one of the most extraordinary engineering and diplomatic achievements of the modern era: the largest, most complex, and longest‑lived spacecraft ever assembled. Its first modules launched in 1998, and the first long‑duration crew — one American and two Russians — moved aboard in 2000. On Nov. 2, 2025, the station will mark 25 years of continuous human habitation.

To date, 290 people from 26 countries have visited the ISS, some staying a year or longer. More than 40% of all humans who have ever been to space are ISS visitors. The station has hosted thousands of scientific and engineering investigations across almost 200 different facilities, producing nearly 127 person‑years of on‑orbit experience and deep practical knowledge about living in low Earth orbit.

If you have seen interior photos, you know the station often looks cluttered: cables run along corridors, equipment projects into passageways, and there is no conventional shower or full kitchen. It does not look like a science‑fiction starship. Yet the ISS embodies a past vision of a future in which humans live permanently off Earth.

Why archaeologists study the ISS

My team’s International Space Station Archaeological Project began because the social and cultural dimensions of life in orbit were understudied. Engineers and mission planners focus on hardware and procedures, but archaeological approaches reveal everyday behaviours and adaptations that interviews alone can miss.

Because direct, long‑term observation aboard the ISS is impractical for researchers, we turned to the rich, time‑stamped photographic archive the crew publish via NASA. Starting in 2015, we used thousands of these images to trace movement, spatial use and material associations over time. In 2022 we ran what we believe was the first archaeological field experiment beyond Earth, led by Alice Gorman: crew members photographed six sample locations daily for two months to produce a systematic visual record of how spaces are used and change.

Key findings

• Personalisation: Crew members personalise their modules with photos, mementos and—on the Russian segment—religious items. These displays function like family photos at home and help maintain social bonds across long missions.
• Improvisation and reuse: Astronauts repurpose areas and objects to solve practical problems. For example, a maintenance workstation became general storage because its Velcro offered flexible attachment points, and crew invented ways to stow toiletries that the original designers had not anticipated.
• Procedures and constrained autonomy: Daily life is governed by detailed procedures from Mission Control and inventories that specify where items belong. Yet within those limits, crews still carve out autonomy through small-scale rearrangements and creative solutions.
• Nationalised modules: Despite an international image, many modules are managed by individual space agencies, which limits cross‑module integration. This structure reflects political accountability but can reduce operational efficiency on a complex, multinational facility.
• Diversifying science: Scientific activity onboard has become more diverse over time. By documenting specialised equipment use, we provided data that commercial station developers now use to design facilities that customers will need.

Why this matters

Archaeological and social‑science perspectives complement technical research by revealing how people actually live and work in space. These insights improve habitat design, logistics and crew wellbeing for future commercial stations and long‑duration missions, including plans for Mars. More broadly, contemporary archaeology — whether studying migration, social identity or environmental change on Earth — helps planners and policymakers design better futures by grounding decisions in how people behave with material culture.

Notes: This work draws on publicly available NASA imagery, crew‑conducted photographic experiments, and interviews. The original essay was first published in The Conversation and contributed to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op‑Ed & Insights.