International Space Station
Some 60 years ago the world was plunged in to one of the greatest wars known to man. Not so many years after that we were thrown in to the cold war. Who would have believed that before the end of the 20th century, countries that were bitter enemies for the larger part of the century would join together to create a space station? The countries participating at present are the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and numerous European nations. The Space Station has enabled us to learn that we can work together peacefully, especially in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
In the early 1980s, NASA planned Space Station Freedom as a counterpart to the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations. It never left the drawing board and, with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, it was cancelled. The end of the Space race prompted the U.S. administration officials to start negotiations with international partners Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada in the early 1990s in order to build a truly international space station. This project was first announced in 1993. The first section, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block, was put in orbit in November 1998 on a Russian Proton rocket.
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