International Space Station program ocean was found to be possible only with Russia's assistance. At the time ISS was launched, the Russian Space Agency had experience from de-orbiting the Salyut 4, 5, 6, and 7 space stations, while NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) would not occur for another two years. NASA currently has no spacecraft capable of de-orbiting the ISS at the time of decommissioning. Skylab, the only space station built and launched entirely by the US, decayed from orbit slowly over 5 years, and no attempt was made to de-orbit the station using a deorbital
Space Station Freedom Space Station Freedom Space Station "Freedom" was a NASA project to construct a permanently manned Earth-orbiting space station in the 1980s. Although approved by then-president Ronald Reagan and announced in the 1984 State of the Union address, "Freedom" was never constructed or completed as originally designed, and after several cutbacks, the project evolved into the International Space Station program. As the Apollo program began to wind down in the late 1960s, there were numerous proposals for what should follow it. Of the many proposals, large and small, three major themes began to gain currency. Foremost among them was a manned