When most people think about space, they picture blazing rocket launches, astronauts floating in bulky suits, or futuristic colonies glowing on the surface of the Moon. Yet according to Professor Victor Buchli of University College London, the most meaningful effects of space exploration are not loud, spectacular, or cinematic. Instead, they are subtle transformations already unfolding in everyday life here on Earth. His research project, Ethno ISS, investigates how human life aboard the International Space Station (ISS) reshapes culture, society, technology, and our understanding of what it means to be human.
The ISS has been continuously inhabited for nearly twenty-five years, making it the oldest settlement beyond Earth. For anthropology—the study of human societies, relationships, and cultural practices—this creates an extraordinary opportunity. Humanity has already expanded its sphere of habitation beyond the planet’s surface, yet the social sciences have only recently begun to explore what that means. As Buchli explains, anthropologists are “a little behind the game,” because humans have already been living in space long enough to form routines, institutions, ways of working, and shared experiences. The Ethno ISS project aims to understand this new form of human habitation and explore how it changes both life in orbit and life on Earth.
In this video Prof. Buchli explains what the Ethno ISS project is all about. See more videos on our YouTube channel here!
Seeing Earth and Orbit as One Human Community
A central idea of the project is that the ISS cannot be studied separately from Earth. Rather than treating space as a distant or disconnected realm, Buchli and his team describe low Earth orbit and the planet’s surface as part of a single expanding human nexus. People, technologies, cultural practices, materials, symbols, and institutions travel between the two. This creates a continuous loop in which each realm influences the other.
This perspective challenges familiar assumptions. Space is not simply “out there,” nor is it a place reserved for science fiction futures. It is already part of ordinary human life. The ISS is connected to mission control centres, laboratories, communication networks, manufacturing facilities, and even religious communities. The expansion of human presence beyond Earth is also ongoing. What is happening in low Earth orbit today is already laying cultural, technological, and psychological foundations for future habitation around the Moon and eventually Mars. Anthropology, therefore, must follow humanity as it extends outward.
Why Microgravity Matters for Understanding Human Life
A major reason the ISS offers such rich ground for research is that it exists in microgravity, a near-weightless environment that alters the basic conditions of life. On Earth, gravity shapes how bodies move, how objects fall, how fluids behave, how tools are designed, and how buildings are constructed. In microgravity, all of these norms dissolve. Everyday actions—from eating and sleeping to working and maintaining equipment—must be reinvented.
Buchli and his colleagues investigate not only how astronauts adapt to these conditions, but how the effects of microgravity ripple back to Earth. Microgravity becomes a laboratory for discovering new materials, new biological processes, and new forms of organisation that do not occur under terrestrial conditions. When these discoveries return to Earth, they change industries, workplaces, homes, and even cultural expectations. In this way, life aboard the ISS quietly reshapes life below.
Subtle but Profound Transformations
One of the most striking themes in Buchli’s explanation of the Ethno ISS project is that the most significant changes are not dramatic or futuristic. Instead, they are subtle shifts that weave themselves into daily routines, professional practices, and community life. Space travel does not only produce thrilling images of launches and spacewalks. It also leads to a suburban family home doubling as a teleworking station supporting space-based manufacturing, or a mundane office park becoming a logistical hub for orbital research.
These kinds of changes seem small on the surface, yet they represent a profound reconfiguration of how society operates. Earthbound spaces are reorganised to support activities taking place in orbit. Professional roles evolve to accommodate the rhythms of space-based work. Cultural practices adapt to include objects and experiences that have travelled beyond Earth. In this sense, the relationship between Earth and the ISS is constantly reshaping the way communities live, interact, and define themselves.
Materials, Medicine, and Manufacturing Reimagined
Professor Buchli’s own research within the project focuses on materials created and studied in microgravity. In weightless conditions, physical and chemical processes behave in ways that are impossible on Earth. Crystals grow more perfectly. Biological matter structures itself differently. Liquids separate and combine in new ways. These changes are not merely scientific curiosities. They lead to innovations with significant consequences on Earth.
For example, some pharmaceuticals can only be produced in microgravity because the molecular structures they require cannot form under gravity’s pull. When these medicines return to Earth, they introduce new possibilities for treatment and healthcare. Similarly, microgravity enables the development of advanced 3D printing methods, new forms of crystalline materials, and manufacturing techniques that could reshape entire industries. As these technologies flow back down to Earth, they alter economic landscapes, industrial processes, and everyday expectations about what materials can do. Orbit and Earth reshape each other in a continuous cycle of innovation.
Religious Life Across Earth and Orbit
Not all of the transformations linked to the ISS are technological. Some belong to the realm of belief, ritual, and community identity. One researcher in the Ethno ISS project examines how religious icons from Orthodox Christian communities are sent to space, carried in orbit, and returned to Earth. These objects participate in a kind of global ritual movement, extending sacred geography into space and back again.
When these icons return, they do not simply resume their original place. Their journey alters their meaning, and in turn reshapes the communities that receive them. Space becomes entwined with spirituality, not as a metaphor but as a lived and material practice. The boundary between celestial and terrestrial faith becomes blurred. Once again, the subtle becomes transformative.
The Overview Effect and Shifting Human Consciousness
Another research strand explores the psychological and philosophical impact of seeing Earth from orbit. Many astronauts report a powerful shift in perception when they look down at the planet—its thin atmosphere, its lack of borders, its unity and fragility. This experience, known as the overview effect, inspires feelings of interconnectedness, environmental awareness, and global belonging.
The Ethno ISS project investigates how this shift affects culture, politics, artistic expression, and collective imagination. If more humans come to see Earth as a shared home rather than a patchwork of competing nations, how might that reshape global identity? The idea that consciousness itself can be transformed through the expansion of human habitation into orbit suggests that space is not only a physical frontier, but a psychological and philosophical one as well.
A New Way of Understanding Humanity’s Future
Across all these examples—the reconfiguration of workspaces, the development of new materials, the circulation of religious objects, the transformation of consciousness—the Ethno ISS project highlights a consistent insight: the expansion of human habitation into space is already changing life on Earth in profound ways. These changes are not loud or cinematic. They unfold quietly through homes, offices, laboratories, churches, and cultural narratives.
This research reframes the story of space exploration. Instead of focusing on competition, conquest, or science fiction visions of distant colonies, it invites us to see space as part of ordinary life and human culture. It encourages us to understand humanity not as confined to Earth, but as a species adapting to new environments and expanding its sphere of experience.
As humans move further into orbit, begin living around the Moon, and eventually take steps toward Mars, anthropology will play a crucial role in understanding how societies evolve, how identities shift, and how meaning is created in new environments. The Ethno ISS project offers an early foundation for this emerging field. It shows that the future of humanity is already being shaped—not through dramatic leaps, but through subtle exchanges between Earth and orbit.
The quiet revolution above us has already begun, and its effects are unfolding all around us.