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The International Space Station (ISS) has been permanently manned for over 14 years, orbiting 400 km above Earth. A wide field of science is performed there, spanning from fundamental physics over biology to human physiology. A short video from the shuttle mission STS-128 will introduce ISS.
A few examples of experiments exploiting the weightlessness will be mentioned, before going into details of JEM-EUSO. The large JEM-EUSO collaboration aims to study Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR; E > 10 EeV). The principle is to observe the UV-light that is emitted by the Extensive Air Showers (EAS) with up to 100 billion particles, which are created by the UHECRs. However, these are extremely rare and therefore a space based detector that can cover a very large area is ideal, in addition to that it gives a uniform coverage of the whole celestial sphere.
Currently a Russian-based design, K-EUSO, is planned for ISS around 2019. A small pre-cursor, Mini-EUSO, to be placed inside ISS in 2017, will in addition to test and validate technology and operations, be able to make interesting scientific contributions in several fields.