The International Space Station

The International Space Station (ISS) began to take shape in Earth orbit in 1998. It has been permanently manned by teams of visiting astronauts since November 2000. Still under construc­tion, it is due to be completed by the year 2010. Progress on the ISS was held up by the grounding of the Space Shuttles after the loss of Columbia in 2003. With Shuttle flights resumed in 2006, however, the remaining modules of the ISS should be in place on sched­ule. They include the European module Columbus along with the Japanese mod­ule Kibo. Russia has plans to launch a third module, the Multi-purpose Laboratory Module (MLM) in 2009, using its Proton rocket. The ISS presently can accommodate a crew of three, and it cir­cles the Earth at an average speed of 17,165 miles per hour (27,618 kilometers per hour). When fully assembled, the space station will be a fully functional space laboratory above Earth, crewed by international scientists.

The space station is an example of international cooperation. Five national space agencies are involved in its construction and use: NASA (United States), the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. The Brazilian and Italian space agencies also are taking part.

Like many other space projects, the ISS represents a compromise. In the 1980s, the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union (now Russia) all had plans to establish their own space stations, but high cost forced them to pool resources. Even so, the ISS is likely to cost more than $100 billion by the time it is completed.

Future ISS-linked developments include the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and a similar spacecraft being built by Japan. There will be new passenger-carrying shuttle vehicles, such as the Space X Dragon (2009) and the Russian Kliper (2012). Europe’s first ATV is designed to be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket and to dock automatically with the space sta­tion to deliver fuel and other supplies. At the end of its stay, the ATV will be loaded with trash and sent on a deliber­ately destructive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up and disintegrate. Six more ATVs will be launched, at eighteen-month intervals, to visit the space station.