page_title: NASA
section_title: International Space Station (1993–present)
hierarchical_section_title: NASA / Space flight programs / International Space Station (1993–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: The International Space Station photographed by Expedition 56 crew members from a Soyuz spacecraft after undocking. NASA astronauts Andrew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev executed a fly around of the orbiting laboratory to take pictures of the station before returning home after spending 197 days in space. The station will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the first element Zarya in November 2018.
context_page_description: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that deals with space exploration and aeronautics, the operating and designing of planes. NASA has had many successful missions, for example the ISS, and Apollo 11, which put the first man on the Moon in 1969. NASA was started on July 29, 1958. NASA's motto is: "For the Benefit of All". The current Administrator of NASA is Jim Bridenstine since April 2018.
context_section_description: In the early 1980s, NASA planned Space Station Freedom as a counterpart to the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations. It never left the drawing board and, with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, it was cancelled. The end of the Space Race prompted the U.S. administration officials to start negotiations with international partners Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada in the early 1990s in order to build the International Space Station. This project was first announced in 1993 and was called Space Station Alpha. It was planned to combine the proposed space stations of all participating space agencies: NASA's Space Station Freedom, Russia's Mir-2 (the successor to the Mir Space Station, the core of which is now Zvezda) and ESA's Columbus that was planned to be a stand-alone spacelab.
caption: International Space Station, as seen by a Soyuz spacecraft
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3X", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:10:25 12:53:57", "Image ExifOffset": "220", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "962", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4968", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1600", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:10:04 08:11:27", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:10:04 08:11:27", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "665241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "56", "EXIF SubSecTime": "40", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "4", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "40", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "6048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4032", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "56", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "5033252", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[28, 70, 14/5, 14/5]", "EXIF LensModel": "28.0-70.0 mm f/2.8"}