system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What exactly are astronauts doing on the ISS? How does data sent down yesterday differ from data sent down today?

I'm not insinuating the science aboard the ISS is pointless, but I don't understand the meaning. What are some of the massive breakthroughs that happened on the ISS? Are we expecting more breakthroughs?
gpt
during the course of science.  90% of the time, it's monotonus running an experiment, daily or hourly monitoring and collecting data points, rerunning the experiment many times for confirmation.   hypothesis.  create a new experiment,  run a new experiment, repeat and repeat until budget is done and hopefully you've come up with a conclusion that's worthy of getting the next grant.

it's not the just astronauts on the ISS making new things.  it's also the hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers on Earth that contribute to the breakthrough's.

astronauts on ISS aren't the ones making the new solar panels.  they're just using them and reporting the findings.   astronauts on the ISS aren't the ones making fuel cells.