We are here because of gravity. Because of gravity, we can drink water. Because of gravity, we can even breathe. Every single activity that we can experience on Earth gets affected by gravity. Then what would happen if gravity suddenly disappears? To study it, five space agencies - NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, CSA, and ESA - collaborated on building the International Space Station (ISS), and its construction ended in 2011. 

The most significant characteristic of the ISS is that it provides a microgravity environment, where only a minimal - in fact, almost negligible - amount of gravity exists. Frequently, people confuse microgravity and vacuum, but those two are very different; a microgravity environment means that there isn’t, or minimal, gravity present, while a vacuum environment means that the space is entirely devoid of matter. Of course, space is both a microgravity and vacuum environment, but inside the ISS, since astronauts or researchers should be able to breathe, oxygen is present. 

Although the ISS can’t simulate the vacuum environment of space, still the fact that it can simulate microgravity gives a great advantage in experimentations. As mentioned above, gravity doesn’t only affect simple motions like apples falling from the sky, but practically anything around us - from bone structure to the digestive system - gets influenced by gravity. Thus, experimenting with how those phenomena would change if gravity is absent can give us new insight into potential difficulties or benefits humans might face when they explore space. 

Furthermore, the experiments aren’t limited to human studies. For instance, NASA has been studying how spiders would construct their webs in a microgravity environment since 2008. Since it is tough to transport spiders from Earth to ISS without harming them, no significant results have been found, but there is no doubt that microgravity study in general is a very prospective field that can yield meaningful findings for future developments. 
 
출처: https://www.engadget.com/nasa-drew-up-contingency-plans-for-russia-iss-exit-in-2021-112253631.html 

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