November 20, 1998

The International Space Station (ISS), under construction since 1998, is the largest international scientific partnership in history. The project involves seventeen countries: the United States, the eleven member nations of the European Space Agency, Canada, Japan, Russia, Italy, and Brazil. When the ISS is completed, astronauts will have assembled a total of one hundred separate parts during forty-five missions while the station orbits 240 miles (384 kilometers) above Earth. The ISS will eventually consist of several modules, and as many as seven crew members will live on board, conducting scientific experiments and space research. By 2004 eight crews had already stayed on the ISS for months at a time. Construction had been postponed in 2003, however, as a result of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, and the future of the ISS remained uncertain. (A space shuttle is a craft that transports people and cargo between Earth and space...