What was the name of the first US space station, launched in 1973?
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
Assembly of the International Space Station Assembly of the International Space Station The process of assembling the International Space Station (ISS) has been under way since the 1990s. "Zarya", the first ISS module, was launched by a Proton rocket on November 20, 1998. The STS-88 shuttle mission followed two weeks after "Zarya" was launched, bringing "Unity", the first of three node modules, and connecting it to "Zarya". This bare 2-module core of the ISS remained unmanned for the next one and a half years, until in July 2000 the Russian module "Zvezda" was launched by a Proton rocket, allowing a maximum crew of two astronauts or