The International Space Station, a cooperative project involving the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and eleven members of the European Space Agency, was billed as a "city in space." It was first conceived by NASA in 1983, but went through many design changes and consumed large sums of money before the first piece was ever built. As envisioned in the 1990s, the station would eventually be the size of a football field and weigh 520 tons when completed, and it would serve as a platform for scientific experiments and space research. On 20 November 1998 a Russian Proton rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan, carrying the first piece of the station, the Zarya (Sunrise) module, pro-viding the initial power, communications, and propulsion for the station. The second piece, the Unity connecting module, was brought into orbit a month later by a U.S. shuttle...