page_title: Assembly of the International Space Station
section_title: Columbia disaster and changes in construction plans
hierarchical_section_title: Assembly of the International Space Station / Columbia disaster and changes in construction plans
caption_attribution_description: English: A close-up camera view shows Space Shuttle Columbia as it lifts off from Launch Pad 39A on mission STS-107. Launch occurred on schedule on 16th of January, 2003 at 10:39 EST (15:39 UTC).
context_page_description: The process of assembling the International Space Station has been under way since the 1990s. Zarya, the first ISS module, was launched by a Proton rocket on 20 November 1998. The STS-88 Space 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 uncrewed 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 cosmonauts to be on the ISS permanently.
  The ISS has a pressurized volume of approximately 1,000 cubic metres, a mass of approximately 420,000 kilograms, approximately 100 kilowatts of power output, a truss 108.4 metres long, modules 74 metres long, and a crew of six. Building the complete station required more than 40 assembly flights. As of 2020, 36 Space Shuttle flights delivered ISS elements. Other assembly flights consisted of modules lifted by the Falcon 9, Russian Proton rocket or, in the case of Pirs and Poisk, the Soyuz-U rocket.
  Some of the larger modules include:
  Zarya
  Unity Module
  Zvezda
  Destiny Laboratory Module
  Harmony Module
caption: Columbia lifting off on its final mission.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2003:01:22 12:24:34", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4134", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2024", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3000"}