'We look forward to sharing our lessons learned and operations experience with the private sector to help them develop safe, reliable, and cost-effective destinations in space,' he said. the station is crewed by nasa astronauts as well as russian cosmonauts and a mixture of japanese, canadian and european astronauts as well. 'The private sector is technically and financially capable of developing and operating commercial low-Earth orbit destinations, with NASA's assistance,' Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA headquarters. The space station will be replaced by 'one or more commercially-owned and -operated' space platforms, NASA said in a statement. NASA has described the retirement of the ISS as a 'transition to commercial services.' On-orbit construction of the station began in. Since then, the space station has served as a hub for scientific research and has been staffed by a rotating crew of three to six astronauts. The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in Low Earth Orbit. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h). The first module of the ISS was launched into orbit in November 1998, and three years later, the first crew took up residence there. The SpaceX Dragon resupply ship lifts off atop the Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after sunset. The Space Station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. The International Space Station orbits Earth about every 90 minutes. It is run by five space agencies with 15 countries involved, making it a symbol of decades of international cooperation. Layers of the Earths atmosphere appear above the Sun.

International space station from earth