On This Day In Space: Dec. 6, 1998: International Space Station assembly begins (Image Credit: Space.com)
On Dec. 6, 1998, astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour officially began the construction of the International Space Station.
Mission STS-88 was the first shuttle mission to the space station. It brought along the first American component of the orbiting laboratory, an 18-foot-long module called the Unity Node, or Node 1.
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By the time the Unity node went to space, Russia’s first space station component, the Zarya module, had already been in orbit for a couple weeks.
So the STS-88 crew brought Unity to Zarya and connected the two components in orbit.
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