A $150-billion contraption floating 270 miles above Earth is one of the most impressive achievements of humankind.
It's called the International Space Station (ISS), and a rotating astronaut crew has occupied it since 2000. The work of those astronauts has yielded some incredible scientific insights.
Astronaut is not a profession where you get to go home at the end of the day though. One ticket from Earth to the ISS costs about $70 million, so normally each crew lives and works on the station for a six-month shift.
Right now NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are in the middle of a year-long shift aboard the ISS. They'll be the first humans to spend a consecutive year living in space.
But what is it like to actually live on the ISS?
The first step to living in space is getting there. All astronauts hitch a ride to the ISS on board a tiny space capsule atop giant rocket that launches from Russia.
The capsule detaches from the rocket and takes the astronauts all the way up to the ISS, which floats about 250 miles above the planet.
The station is a system of labs, living quarters, and control rooms, and it spans about the length of a football field. A rotating crew of six astronauts share the space.
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