![]() In June 2008 the main part of Kibo was installed. Also in March shuttle astronauts brought the Canadian robot, Dextre, which was so sophisticated that it would be able to perform tasks that previously would have required astronauts to make space walks, and the first part of Kibo. In the following month an improved variant of the Ariane V rocket launched Europe’s heaviest spacecraft, the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which carried 7,700 kg (17,000 pounds) of supplies to the ISS. Columbus was Europe’s first long-duration crewed space laboratory and contained experiments in such fields as biology and fluid dynamics. In February 2008 Columbus was mounted on Harmony’s starboard side. Harmony has a docking port for the space shuttle and connecting ports for a European laboratory, Columbus, and a Japanese laboratory, Kibo. The European-built American node, Harmony, was placed on the end of Destiny in October 2007. Construction resumed in September of that year, with the addition of a pair of solar wings and a thermal radiator. During ISS construction, both shuttles and Russian Soyuz spacecraft transported people to and from the station, and a Soyuz remained docked to the ISS at all times as a “lifeboat.”Īfter the shuttle resumed regular flights in 2006, the ISS crew size was increased to three. Other elements were ferried up by space shuttle and assembled in orbit during space walks. Russian modules were carried into space by Russian expendable launch vehicles, after which they automatically rendezvoused with and docked to the ISS. Aside from the United States and Russia, station construction involved Canada, Japan, and 11 ESA members. A NASA microgravity laboratory called Destiny and other elements were subsequently joined to the station, with the overall plan calling for the assembly, over a period of several years, of a complex of laboratories and habitats crossed by a long truss supporting four units that held large solar-power arrays and thermal radiators. The ISS has been continuously occupied since then. In mid-2000 the Russian-built module Zvezda, a habitat and control centre, was added, and on November 2 of that year the ISS received its first resident crew, comprising Russian cosmonauts Sergey Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko and American astronaut William Shepherd, who flew up in a Soyuz spacecraft. ![]()
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