Ever wanted to know what life's like aboard the International Space Station? Nasa has thrown a small chunk of its (not inconsiderable) public relations budget into creating an interactive tour of the tin can floating above our heads.
You can learn how the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the station eat, sleep, exercise, carry out their research.
There's also a part-by-part description of each bit of the ISS. Which, by the way, is horribly delayed and well over budget. It has sucked away $100bn so far (and counting) with very little scientific return and it still isn't finished. With Nasa focused on Moon and Mars missions, the ISS has been starved of nearly all of its funding for science research. It now takes up $2bn a year just to stay mothballed in low-Earth orbit.
Still, Nasa's produced an ace interactive tour - the highlight is a 360-degree video of the almost-mundane-if-it-wasn't-in-space innards of the Zvezda module, the first fully-functional element of the station contributed by Russia. The module is one of the main living and working areas for the astronauts and was attached in 2000.
There is cause for some hope in the ISS saga: in a few months time, Europe's Columbus module will hopefully be attached (it arrived in Florida ready for launch last year). Along with Japan's Kibo, Columbus could see a resurrection of some of the station's science goals - scientists know that it could be a good platform for astronomy, for hunting exotic particles in space or doing research on what happens to people after long periods in space.
