Capture the legacy of the International Space Station before it hits the ocean

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The The International Space Station will intentionally fall to Earth Come to rest in the depths point nemoa water cemetery 2,000 miles (3,219 km) north of Antarctica, in January 2031.

The space station will join Russia’s Mir and NASA’s Skylab fragments in the uninhabited South Pacific, home to more than 263 pieces of intentional space debris.

Since November 2000, the space station has served as a laboratory orbiting 227 nautical miles (420 kilometers) above our planet, as well as Home to the constantly rotating crews of astronauts and astronauts. It was the site for the first time where astronauts successfully sequenced DNA and They feed on crops grown in space.

The space station’s eventual fate has been part of the plan since before the units were ever launched. But when you remove the space station from orbit, it will be the end of an era. Part of its legacy will be preserved through outer space archeology.

Now that NASA has shared a file Updated transition plan for the space stationwhich does not currently involve returning any artifacts for use in research or museums, the studies that a team of researchers would like to conduct in the floating laboratory are of added importance.

Furthermore, by understanding the ways in which astronauts have used space and the instruments on the space station, this input can be used to design future spacecraft and habitats while exploring the Moon and Mars.

The first archaeological study conducted outside Earth was The brainchild of Justin St. P. Walsh, associate professor of art history and archeology at Chapman University in California, and Alice Gorman, associate professor in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in Australia. They began the creative process of looking at the space station from an archaeological perspective in December 2015.

With the help of the International Space Station’s National Laboratory’s Center for the Advancement of Science in Space and implementing partner Axiom Space, Walsh and Gorman were finally able to see the first step of their investigation become a reality this year.

“The International Space Station is an important site for the development of humanity living in space,” Walsh said. “If this is a site on the ground, we’ll do everything we can to preserve it. But it’s not technically feasible, so the next thing archaeologists do, like when sites are flooded because of a dam, for example, is to document everything we can about site, and preserve those documents and any samples for prosperity.”

The project began on the space station in January. The experiment, called the Quadrilateral Aggregations Research Experiment, or SQuARE, is a simple one.

Archaeologists often create a test pit at an important site, dividing it into a grid of squares for excavation purposes.

However, the layers of the space station cannot be excavated – or have scientists squeezed in to conduct a study.

Astronauts placed 3-foot (1 meter) strip squares on walls throughout the space station and photographed them every day for 60 days to show how these areas change over time.

The results can simulate the way soil layers preserve different moments in time at archaeological sites.

The boxes were placed on the kitchen table where the crew ate, across from the toilet, a workstation and two different science stations, as well as a place of choice for the crew. The six sites capture what everyday life looks like in zero gravity.

Heritage sites are often thought of as places of historical significance on Earth — but they are also found in space, Gorman said.

The Apollo moon landing sites are a prime example, and as we leave human and robotic footprints in places like Mars, those places of interest will spread.

“No one has collected such data before, so we don’t have it for Mir and Skylab,” Gorman said.

European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer tweeted His enthusiasm to participate in the experiment in February.

“Space Archeology with SQuARES”. Using a ruler and color chart, we are documenting the use and changes of selected areas on the #ISS to help design future spaceships and habitats,” Maurer wrote in his tweet.

It can be especially useful when trying to determine where to place what Gorman refers to as “gravity surrogates,” or the bungee cords, clips, and self-tapping strips essential to life in the absence of gravity.

“We would expect to find aspects of adapting to life in this kind of environment that no one knew about before,” Gorman said.

“If you’re an archaeologist excavating a Viking tall house, you might have ideas about what works and what doesn’t, but you don’t have the opportunity to knock on a Viking door and say, ‘Hey, I’ have some ideas here for how to design your next little village. But we have that opportunity.”

The SQuARE trial will conclude on March 22nd. When the crew, including NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Mark Vande Hey, return to Earth this spring, the researchers will get a chance to speak with them.

Gorman Walsh envisions a series of six additional experiments if they get the funding.

Other experiences include recording the space station’s acoustic environment and documenting the search for privacy in a small habitat, something that can come in handy as crews prepare to experience time on the much smaller portal that will orbit between the Moon and Earth as a supporting axis. Moon exploration.

In turn, the lessons learned by Gorman Walsh from their first experience aboard the space station can be applied to remote sites on Earth, such as the artifacts left on Mount Everest decades after people climbed to its summit.

“This could be the beginning of different kinds of archaeology that we could see in the future,” Gorman said.