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By piece over the last 16 years. and you can thank what's called the canada arm 2 for that. it built the iss while in orbit and grabs incoming spacecraft docking them to the station. there are no do-overs in space, meaning the canada arm 2 can't miss. so it's robotics are some of the most precise and accurate technologies you can find. that same technology used on the space station was applied to a surgical robot here on earth, a robot that wants to remove the word "inoperable" from our vocabulary. outside an operating room at foothills hospital in calgary, canada, dr. garnett sutherland preps...

Night otherwise. at the robot's workstation dr. sutherland removes the aneurysm from lee's brain. >> believe it or not, it's over. >> reporter: when the aerospace engineers first built canada arm 2 for the space station, they never dreamed it would help people rebuild their lives. those unintended benefits continue to extend to our daily lives here on earth. >> just break off a piece. >> reporter: including what you eat, and how you exercise. >> we use all the different surfaces of the space station, so they're in different configurations. making a fist something we do to show resolve. to defe...

Nearly 400 kilometers above the earth's surface, the international space station continues its orbit, where it has been every day for the last 16 years. a six-person crew lives onboard. their official titles are astronaut or cosmonaut, but their day job is really scientist. at its core, the iss is a science laboratory. there are experiments that help us understand earth and space, of course, but also the human body and medicine. >> there are parts of the vibration isolation stabilization system, they're kind of little shock absorbers.

In 1998, the station began an on orbit assembly, meaning it was built in space and was only recently completed. since the first crew arrived in november of 2000, more than 200 astronauts from 15 different countries have visited the station. >> when people say this still, you know, is it worth the cost -- >> all the technologies that we've pushed that then turn around and become amazing new things back here on earth because we're trying to work in an environment where our engineering assumptions are wrong, so we have to be innovative, we have to solve problems we would never dream of and that g...

I just need to be clipped into these pedals. there's just something about space that brings out the kid in all of us. the curiosity, the possibility, the unknown. but it's what we're learning in space that might be the most exciting of all. as space technology overlaps with life here on earth and life on earth extends to space, there's no doubt that the iss is helping us explore new ways to improve our health and better our lives. exciting new breakthroughs, only outer space can provide. for "vital signs," i'm dr. sanjay gupta.