The International Space Station

NASA’s interest in Mir was strictly as a stepping-stone, and it intended soon after the final shuttle-Mir mission in early 1998 to put into orbit the first element of its multinational project, which had come to be called the International Space Station (ISS). Launched by Russia atop a Proton rocket in late 1998, the initial module, called Zarya, was designed to provide attitude control and solar power arrays for the nascent station. Shortly afterward, space shuttle astronauts ferried up and attached the first U.S.-built element, named Unity, a connecting node with multiple docking systems.

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Development difficulties delayed the launch of the next ISS element, Zvezda, a crew habitat and control centre similar to the Mir base block, until mid-2000. Two weeks after it was carried up on a Proton rocket, Zvezda rendezvoused and docked automatically at the trailing end of Zarya. Later in the year, the first resident ISS crew, comprising two Russians and an American, arrived in a Soyuz TM. Subsequent installation of a large solar power array and cooling radiators on a truss mounted on Unity cleared the way for the shuttle launch of NASA’s microgravity laboratory, Destiny, in early 2001. The addition of Destiny, which astronauts mated to the leading end of Unity, marked a milestone in the project because it facilitated science operations. Other components were subsequently appended. After the catastrophic explosion of the shuttle orbiter Columbia in 2003 and the consequent temporary grounding of the shuttle fleet, activity aboard the ISS was reduced virtually to a caretaker level, while Soyuz spacecraft provided the sole means for station crew exchanges.

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After the shuttle fleet resumed regular flights in 2005, the ISS crew size was increased to three. Construction resumed in September of that year, with the addition of a pair of solar wings and a thermal radiator. The European-built American node, Harmony, was placed on the end of Destiny in October 2007. Harmony has a docking port for the space shuttle and connecting ports for a European laboratory, Columbus, and a Japanese laboratory, Kibo. In February 2008 Columbus was mounted on Harmony’s starboard side. Columbus was Europe’s first long-duration crewed space laboratory and contained experiments in such fields as biology and fluid dynamics. In the following month an improved variant of the Ariane V rocket launched Europe’s heaviest spacecraft, the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which carried 7,700 kg (17,000 pounds) of supplies to the ISS. Also in March 2008 shuttle astronauts brought the Canadian robot Dextre, which was so sophisticated that it would be able to perform tasks that previously would have required astronauts to make space walks, and the first part of Kibo. In June 2008 the main part of Kibo was installed.

The ISS became fully operational in May 2009 when it began hosting a six-person crew; this required two Soyuz lifeboats to be docked with the ISS at all times. An external platform was attached to the far end of Kibo in July 2009, and a Russian docking port and air lock, Poisk, was attached to the Zvezda module in November 2009. A third node, Tranquility, was installed in 2010, and mounted on this was a cupola, whose robotic workstation and many windows enabled astronauts to supervise external operations.

After completion of the ISS, the shuttle fleet was retired from service in 2011. Thereafter the ISS was serviced by Russia’s Progress, Europe’s ATV, Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, and two commercial cargo vehicles, SpaceX’s Dragon and Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus. American astronauts used Soyuz spacecraft to reach the ISS until 2020, when American companies developed crewed spacecraft, the first of which was SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The space agencies that are partners in the ISS have not definitively decided when the program will end, but in 2010 the administration of U.S. Pres. Barack Obama announced that the ISS program would continue “likely beyond 2020,” and in 2021 Russia announced that its participation in the ISS might end in 2025 with the construction of a new Russian station.