Space Station

The Space Station Project

Ground breaking for the Space Station Exhibit is planned for the year 2002 with the Dedication Ceremony scheduled for 2003. As the Space Station becomes a reality this section will be updated.

To address "this unprecedented cost growth," President George W. Bush is calling in his New Budget plan for completing the US core of the station in 2003, three years earlier than planned."

The president is urging NASA to complete its portion of the space station in 2003, three years early, and to drop some of the components planned. Space shuttles would fly six times a year, instead of seven or eight.

15 Nations Sign Pact To Launch 'City In Space'
International Station Will Replace The Aging Mir
CNN, January 30, 1998

Senior officials from the United States, Russia and 13 other nations have signed an agreement to cooperate in building an international space station. It also adds Sweden and Switzerland, and includes 11 members of the European Space Agency. All the nations will cooperate in designing, developing, operating and using the station. "We will change the course of human history," NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin told a department gathering that included Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, a space pioneer.

The station, billed as the most ambitious space program in history, will replace the world's only orbital laboratory, Russia's aging Mir station, which has been in service since 1986. Goldin said the project entails nothing less than a "city in space." It is the largest international civil science and technology project ever undertaken. Goldin's Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, said the cooperative venture means an end to the era of rivalry and "senseless competition" in the space field.

First conceived a decade ago, work already has begun on building the station. Its first module, U.S.-funded and Russian-built, is being transported from Moscow to Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it will be launched June 30. Over the next five years, more than 100 components of the station will be assembled. It will support a crew of up to seven people and include five pressurized laboratories. Other countries taking part in the project are Canada, Japan, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. The Associated Press contributed to this report.