The international space station, or i s s, is an engineering marvel conceived in 19 98 and built piece by piece over a decade's time. Over the last two decades, humans living and working aboard the orbiting outpost have conducted over three thousand science experiments that included everything from fundamental physics to biomedical studies. Sadly, the historic station is fast approaching its expiry date. And this could be the dawn of commercial space stations. On second december, nasa awarded three private companies with contracts worth 400 million dollars to develop and deploy commercial space stations in low earth orbit. S nanorak went on to receive the largest contract, worth one 60 million dollars for its star lab project which will include an