Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station
Thanks to the efforts of European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, you can share the dizzying experience of floating through the International Space Station's many modules.
For the benefit of those of us stuck on Earth, Cristoforetti photographed the ISS interior in all of its glory, which you can now experience in this epic virtual tour of the entire ISS.
Cristoforetti holds the record for spending the longest consecutive amount of time of any woman in space, a lengthy 199 days and 16 hours. She returned to Earth last June.
In the tour, you can see places like the dining area, water dispenser, crew quarters, and airlock.
The photos below show off some of the many rooms of the ISS you can see in the tour:
Here's a shot of NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin finding a spot for their Expedition badges on the Unity module.?
Portraits of pioneering Russian cosmonauts and engineers are visible in the center of the Zvezda Service Module in the photo below:
Here, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli poses inside the Zarya module next to stowed cases of food.
And here, NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff works in the Columbus module of the ISS:
Watch NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman travel from one side of the ISS to the other. Wiseman worked aboard the ISS during Expeditions 40 and 41.
Right now, there are six astronauts aboard the ISS as part of Expedition 44, including NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko.
Kelly and Kornienko are participating in the ISS's One Year Mission to study the effects of life in space on the human body. Scott Kelly's identical twin, former astronaut Mark Kelly, will be monitored on Earth during the same period as part of NASA's Twins Study.
The Expedition 44 crew has also been investigating crop growth in space and observing "potentially threatening" microbes.
Check out the video of Cristoforetti explaining the station's toilet below: