8/29/2023 0 Comments English and russianThere’s some speculation that the ISS could run out of funding in the near future, that China’s agency will play a bigger role in the international space scene, and that new coalitions will form as efforts to reach Mars intensify. What’s more, it shouldn’t be assumed that English and Russian will remain the two main working languages of the ISS forever. Anderson, a former resident of the ISS in 2010, “At times one could probably have heard Japanese, Italian, French, German, Russian, English, and even Portuguese (and astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson probably used some sign language too!).” That being said, there are many languages one can encounter aboard the International Space Station. It would simply be too time-consuming and inefficient for an interpreter to translate it all back to them. Though the commander of the Soyuz is always Russian, the astronaut sitting to their left has to duplicate the commander’s actions the whole way there, which means they have to be able to understand and respond to Mission Control Center giving commands in Russian for hours. Astronauts need to speak Russian at an intermediate-high level for the purposes of getting there and back, because all the procedures and labels are written in Russian on the Soyuz. While SpaceX - a privately owned company - recently made its first trip to the ISS from American soil in over a decade, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft has been the only mode of transportation into space for years prior to that. In order to keep it all running smoothly, it’s required that everyone who travels to the ISS has a working knowledge of English, but that’s only once you’re there. Since the first crew arrived, there have been humans living in space every day, and the research being done there is helping us better understand the long-term effects of living in space. The ISS is a home for astronauts, as well as a working research laboratory and testing site for spacecraft that might eventually send humans even farther into space one day. According to NASA, “the ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.” Behind this accord is a complex web of government treaties and agreements. To date, it’s been visited by astronauts from 18 countries, and there are facilities around the world that support its operation. The International Space Station is crewed by a multinational coalition of five space agencies: the United States’ NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, Canada’s CSA, Japan’s JAXA and Europe’s ESA. What Happens Aboard The International Space Station? It can also be a matter of life and death - of successfully landing a spacecraft or avoiding an accident.Īs a complex multinational operation, the ISS serves as an interesting case study for collaboration between multiple languages and cultures. Smooth communication isn’t just a matter of all the astronauts getting along on what are surely long and claustrophobic missions. Coincidentally (or not), they’re the languages of the former Cold War rivals.īut language on the International Space Station becomes an increasingly complicated and urgent matter when you consider how high the stakes can get. Aboard the International Space Station, where space agencies - from the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and various countries in Europe - convene, the two main languages in use are English and Russian. The days of Sputnik and Laika feel like ancient history by now, but the legacy set by the Space Race is still very much alive today.
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