page_title: Space Station Freedom
section_title: Conversion to the International Space Station
hierarchical_section_title: Space Station Freedom / Conversion to the International Space Station
caption_attribution_description: English: The International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an STS-134 crew member on the space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 11:55 p.m. (EDT) on May 29, 2011. Endeavour spent 11 days, 17 hours and 41 minutes attached to the orbiting laboratory.
context_page_description: Space Station Freedom was a NASA project to construct a permanently crewed 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.
  Space Station Freedom was a joint project between four participating space agencies: NASA, NASDA, ESA, and CSA.
context_section_description: In 1993, the Clinton administration announced the transformation of Space Station Freedom into the International Space Station (ISS). NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin supervised the addition of Russia to the project. To accommodate reduced budgets, the station design was scaled back from 508 to 353 square feet (47 to 33 m²), the crew capacity of the NASA-provided part was reduced from 7 to 3 (while the complete station is crewed by 6 but may be increased to 7), and the station's functions were reduced. Its first component was launched into orbit in 1998, with the first long-term residents arriving in November 2000.
caption: International Space Station in May 2011
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