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European Space Agency

Press Release

Building the International Space Station
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11 December 2002

How has the International Space Station (ISS) changed since building
started in 1998? When and how were new parts added? What is ESA's
contribution? Which astronauts have lived on the Space Station?
What's next? Find out on ESA's new Building the ISS web pages.
 
Building the ISS in orbit 
-------------------------
When ISS is completed it will cover an area as big as a football pitch 
and weigh 455 tonnes. It would have been impossible to build ISS on 
the ground and then launch it into space in one go; there is no rocket 
big enough or powerful enough. To get round this problem the Space 
Station is taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually built in 
orbit, approximately 400 km above the Earth's surface.

There are flights to take up new parts of the Station, but other
flights are also necessary; some bring supplies, such as oxygen, food
and water, others exchange the permanent crew, and every six months or 
so the Station's 'lifeboat' must also be replaced.

The ISS partners have agreed upon a sequence of launches required to
build, supply, maintain and crew the Space Station. This sequence is
presented on the Building the ISS web pages.


The gallery
-----------
On opening the Building the ISS pages, the top half of the screen
shows a sequence of real photos of ISS. Each photo is taken after a
new element has been added to the Station - click on the thumbnail to
see a larger photo and to discover what has been added at each step.
The gallery will be updated with new photos as building progresses. 


The timeline
------------
The lower half of the screen shows the sequence of flights as agreed
by the ISS partners. Starting on the left with the launch of the
Russian-built Zarya in 1998, the timeline progresses through all 33
flights that have taken place to date and on to future missions
planned for the coming years.

Click on the dates along the timeline and a pop-up window appears with 
more details about each flight. The pop-up window displays information 
about the launch and landing dates, payloads and crews, and is 
illustrated with images where these are available.


ESA's contribution
------------------
A partnership between 10 European countries (represented by ESA), the
United States (NASA), Japan (NASDA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (RKA),
ISS is the world's largest international cooperative programme in
science and technology to date.

Flights carrying an ESA payload or in some cases an ESA astronaut are
labelled with an ESA logo. Click on the date to launch the pop-up
window and find out more about ESA's contribution to the flight. 

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