International Space Station Turns 10

November 21, 2008 — It started about as big as a bus. Now, 10 years later, the International Space Station is about as big as a five-bedroom house. Nations around the world joined together to mark a milestone in space exploration on November 20, celebrating the 10th birthday of the unique research laboratory. The station is a venture of international cooperation among NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, and 11 members of the European Space Agency, or ESA: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The orbital assembly of the space station began with the launch from Kazakhstan of the Zarya module on November 20, 1998. A few weeks later, the space shuttle carried aloft the Unity connector module. Constructed on opposite sides of Earth, Unity and Zarya met for the first time in space and were joined to begin the orbital station's assembly and a decade of peaceful cooperation. Today, the station's mass is more than 627,000 pounds, and its interior volume is more than 25,000 cubic feet, comparable to the size of a five-bedroom house. Since Zarya's launch as the early command, control and power module, there have been 29 additional construction flights to the station: 27 aboard the space shuttle and two additional Russian launches. "The station's capability and sheer size today are truly amazing," said station Program Manager Mike Suffredini. "The tremendous technological achievement in orbit is matched only by the cooperation and perseverance of its partners on the ground. We have overcome differences in language, geography and engineering philosophies to succeed."

STS-126 mission specialists Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Shane Kimbrough perform the second spacewalk of the STS-126 mission. Credit: NASA TV The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on October 14, 2008, carrying NASA astronaut Michael Fincke, Expedition 18 commander; Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, Soyuz commander and flight engineer; and American spaceflight participant Richard Garriott. Credit: NASA TV

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