The History of the International Space Station

The History of the International Space Station

This article relates to Orbital

Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize–winning novel Orbital takes place aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, into space. According to NASA's website, the event "had a 'Pearl Harbor' effect on American public opinion. It was a shock, introducing the average citizen to the space age in a crisis setting." In response, the United States started its own space program, culminating in a piloted flight to Earth's moon in 1969. As of 2024, the United States remains the only nation to have completed a mission of this kind.

From the beginning, American space program engineers considered options for not only traveling through space but living in it as well. US Army scientists initially believed that in order to reach the moon, an outpost would be needed to house crews and refuel spacecraft en route, and so in 1959 their Project Horizon proposed such a craft. They later turned the project over to NASA, which began design work in the early 1960s. The result was Skylab, America's first experimental space station. Launched in May 1973, Skylab was only crewed for 171 days total through February 1974. (For a truly harrowing account of Skylab's first days, check out this great article from the BBC's Sky At Night magazine.) Although its mission was limited, Skylab nevertheless proved that people could live for extended periods of time in space and provided valuable scientific information about the Earth, the Sun, and the stars. It also laid the groundwork for its successor, the International Space Station (ISS).

Congressional budget cuts in the late 1970s and early 1980s trimmed NASA's funds to about 10 percent of what they had been at its height, and many programs were mothballed. In 1984, however, President Ronald Reagan pushed through a new space program that would rely on international partnerships. The design process for the ISS began later that year, and elements of the modular spacecraft were constructed by the United States, Canada, Japan, and a coalition of countries making up the European Space Agency. In 1993, Russia asked to join the project; their space lab Mir ("Peace")—the first permanent space station, launched a decade earlier—was reaching end-of-life, and Russia felt the collaboration would benefit all parties.

The mission was carried out in two parts. Phase 1 was dubbed NASA-Mir and ran from 1995 to 1998. During this period, NASA shuttles carried both astronauts and cosmonauts to the fully functional Mir space station. The crews resided on Mir while helping modify the Russian-built modules "to house US and international experiments and to establish working processes between the participating nations."

Phase 2 began in 1998 with the launch of the first segments that would be assembled to create the ISS. The Zarya ("Sunrise") piece, which would supply fuel storage, power, and docking modules to be used in future missions, left the Russian Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 20, while the US Unity module, which provided living and working space for the crews, left Earth on December 4. The first official ISS crew (astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev) arrived on November 2, 2000, although the space station was not considered fully operational until May 2009.

Originally NASA used rockets and shuttles to supply the ISS with both parts and crews, transitioning to the Russian Soyez spacecraft for a few years after Space Shuttle Columbia exploded in February 2003. Most recently, however, NASA has contracted with private companies for these services; Elon Musk's SpaceX delivered its first cargo to the ISS in 2012, and its first crew in 2020.

The ISS has been continuously inhabited since 2000 (typically by a crew of seven, but it's periodically hosted as many as thirteen individuals). As of 2024, over 250 people from more than twenty countries have lived aboard, and more than 3300 experiments have been conducted. The craft has continued to evolve over the decades, too, with the United States, Russia, and its international partners adding modules as needed. It's the largest structure humanity has put in space; its solar panels alone cover over an acre (and thanks to these, people on Earth can see the ISS pass overhead with the naked eye). It has seven sleeping quarters with the ability to add more during crew handovers, two bathrooms, a gym, and a cupola that provides a 360-degree-view bay window of the Earth. It orbits Earth about sixteen times a day at an altitude of approximately 250 miles (402 kilometers) above its surface, with its orbital path taking it over 90 percent of the Earth's population each day. The ISS currently costs the United States about $3 billion annually (roughly a third of NASA's budget).

The space station had been scheduled for decommissioning, but in 2021 President Joe Biden extended its mission through 2030 with the support of its international partners. There's no concern about its operability, but NASA feels the station is past its prime. In an interview with NPR, Phil McCalister, director of the Commercial Space Division of NASA, likened it to an old car, saying it's running fine but it's getting harder and more expensive to get replacement parts, and a newer model could incorporate more modern technology. The next US space station will likely be a collaboration between NASA and commercial entities such as SpaceX and Boeing.

International Space Station, March 2001, courtesy of NASA.gov

Filed under Medicine, Science and Tech

This article relates to Orbital. It first ran in the January 15, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.