Where Is the International Space Station? On December 6, 1998, a construction crew began working on a huge building project. But it wasn’t a usual construction site with bulldozers, dump trucks, traffic cones, or workers in hard hats. This crew was made up of astronauts. They were putting together pieces of the International Space Station (ISS), and they were doing it about 250 miles above Earth!
A Russian spacecraft had delivered the first piece, called Zarya, into Earth’s orbit on November 20, 1998. This module had been waiting more than two weeks for the United States’ space shuttle Endeavour to arrive with another module called Unity.
Endeavour opened the doors of its large payload bay (an area that holds the cargo of the spaceship). Unity was carefully nestled inside with little room to spare. Docking two huge modules together in space would not be a simple job. And they were all traveling 17,500 miles per hour. That’s five miles per second!
Shuttle astronaut Nancy Currie controlled the shuttle’s robotic arm. She was nervous, even though she had been training for two and a half years for this moment. She sat at the controls. Her view out the window was blocked, so Nancy had to rely on monitors to line up the modules. Very carefully, she moved the arm to reach out and grab Zarya. She pulled the module closer to Unity, where it was still connected to the shuttle’s payload bay. She also used some of the thrusters on Endeavour to better line the pieces up. Even though the modules were designed to fit together, they had been built in different countries by different teams. Everyone hoped they would connect as planned.
All of Currie’s training paid off! The two pieces locked together. She could finally breathe again. The first step in the construction of the International Space Station was a success!
Piece by piece, modules and other parts would be brought up and assembled in orbit. Within a few years, crews would be living and working on the ISS. By 2011, with the help of fifteen nations, construction was finally complete. After that, even more pieces were added.
Since it was first occupied more than twenty years ago, the ISS has been a scientific laboratory orbiting around Earth. Inside its many modules, crews of astronauts perform experiments. These astronauts have come from the United States, Russia, and many other countries. They have made amazing discoveries about space, our planet, and even the human body. The hard work done on the ISS benefits everyone on Earth.
Discoveries from the International Space Station will help us in the future, too. Scientists and engineers plan to travel beyond our orbit. All we have learned from the ISS has prepared them to venture to other planets and deeper into space to discover even more about the universe we call home.
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