As 2026 begins, the International Space Station (ISS) continues to orbit Earth as humanity’s longest-running experiment in sustained life beyond the planet. More than a scientific laboratory, the ISS remains a complex socio-technical environment where research, logistics, culture, and care intersect on a daily basis.
The year 2025 was characterised by operational continuity, steady scientific output, and evolving practices of international collaboration. For ETHNO-ISS, it also provided further material for understanding how life in orbit is structured, negotiated, and sustained under conditions that remain exceptional, demanding, and profoundly human.
Scientific Continuity and Operational Rhythms in 2025
Throughout 2025, the ISS maintained a full research schedule, supporting experiments across human physiology, materials science, fluid dynamics, combustion, Earth observation, and technology demonstration. These investigations—often spanning multiple expeditions—relied on precise scheduling, redundancy, and the disciplined coordination of crews and ground teams.
Regular cargo resupply missions ensured the steady flow of food, scientific hardware, spare parts, and personal items. Such missions underpin the everyday stability of orbital life, yet they also highlight the dependence of the ISS on Earth-based infrastructures. The station’s apparent permanence is, in practice, sustained through constant logistical care.
Crew rotations during 2025 reinforced the station’s role as a multinational workplace. Astronauts and cosmonauts from different space agencies trained within distinct institutional cultures, yet were required to operate seamlessly once in orbit. The ISS thus continues to function as a living laboratory for international cooperation under conditions where collaboration is not optional but existential.
Everyday Life in Microgravity: An Ethnographic Perspective
From an ethnographic standpoint, the ISS in 2025 offered further insight into how humans adapt socially and materially to microgravity. Daily routines—maintenance tasks, scientific procedures, exercise regimens, meals, and communication with Earth—structure time and meaning aboard the station.
Microgravity reshapes not only bodies but relationships with objects and spaces. Tools float, sounds travel differently, and orientations are constantly renegotiated. Astronauts develop shared tacit knowledge about how to move, store, repair, and improvise. These practices, rarely visible in mission summaries, are central to making orbital life workable.
Cultural exchange also unfolds in subtle ways: through shared meals, multilingual communication, symbolic rituals, and collective problem-solving. The ISS remains one of the few environments where sustained intercultural cooperation occurs continuously beyond national territory, offering valuable insights into future long-duration missions.
Transitioning into 2026: Continuity Meets Vulnerability
As 2025 gave way to 2026, ISS operations continued without interruption. Ongoing expedition missions ensured a stable human presence in low Earth orbit, allowing long-term experiments to proceed and new research campaigns to begin. This continuity reflects decades of operational learning and institutional commitment.
Yet January 2026 also brought a moment that highlighted the inherent vulnerability of human spaceflight. The early return of a crewmember due to a medical condition marked the first time that health concerns necessitated an accelerated departure from the ISS. While the individual was reported to be stable, the event underscored the limits of engineering when confronted with human biology.
From an ethnographic and ethical perspective, this episode is significant. It reveals how care, risk management, and decision-making operate in extreme environments. The prioritisation of crew health over mission timelines reinforces the principle that human well-being remains central, even in highly technical systems.
Care, Medicine, and Responsibility in Orbit
Space medicine has long focused on mitigation—countering bone loss, muscle atrophy, radiation exposure, and psychological stress. The January 2026 medical return illustrates how preparedness extends beyond prevention to response. Evacuation capability, clinical monitoring, and decision authority are integral to sustaining trust in human spaceflight.
For ETHNO-ISS, such moments invite deeper reflection on how care is practised at a distance. Medical expertise is distributed across orbit and ground, mediated by communication systems and protocols. Responsibility is shared, negotiated, and enacted under time pressure. These dynamics will only grow more complex as missions venture farther from Earth.
Looking Forward: The ISS in a Changing Orbital Landscape
As commercial space stations, lunar missions, and deep-space exploration initiatives accelerate, the ISS remains a critical reference point. In 2026, it continues to provide empirical grounding for understanding what it means to live and work in space over extended periods.
The station’s approaching end-of-life has prompted renewed attention to knowledge preservation—not only of scientific data, but of social practices, operational wisdom, and human experience. ETHNO-ISS remains committed to documenting these dimensions, ensuring that future space habitats are informed not only by engineering success, but by lived realities.
The ISS endures as more than infrastructure. It is a shared human environment—one that reveals how cooperation, adaptation, and care make life in orbit possible.
The Ethno ISS Team wishes everyone a happy new orbit around the Sun!