Space archaeologists are charting humanity’s furthest frontier
Enlarge / Astronaut Kayla Barron snaps photos inside an ISS module. (credit: NASA)
Archaeologists have probed the cultures of people all over the Earth-so why not study a unique community that's out of this world? One team is creating a first-of-its-kind archaeological record of life aboard the International Space Station.
The new project, called the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment, or SQuARE, involves hundreds of photos taken by astronauts throughout the living and work spaces of the ISS. People have continuously occupied the space station for decades, and the launch of its initial modules in the late 1990s coincided with the rise of digital photography. That meant that astronauts were no longer limited by film canisters when documenting life in space, and that space archaeologists-yes, that's a thing-no longer had to merely speculate about it from afar.