Partnerships: International Collaboration in Low-Earth Orbit and Beyond

By Craig Collins - February 27, 2019

STS-131 and Expedition 23 crewmembers gathered for a group portrait in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Discovery remained docked with the station. STS-131 crewmembers pictured (light blue shirts) are NASA astronauts Alan Poindexter, commander; James P. Dutton Jr., pilot; and Clayton Anderson, Rick Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, all mission specialists. Expedition 23 crewmembers pictured are Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov, commander, and Mikhail Kornienko and Alexander Skvortsov; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi; and NASA astronauts T.J. Creamer and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, all flight engineers. NASA photo

Two of the ISS’s connecting modules were built in Italy under a NASA/ESA agreement. Harmony (Node 2) serves as the connecting point for the Destiny, Kibo, and Columbus laboratories. With six berthing locations, it also provides ports for cargo vehicles, and is a utility hub for the station, providing electrical power, heating and cooling, and data and video exchange support. Permanent crew quarters – rack-sized staterooms for off-duty crewmembers – were added to Harmony to allow astronauts private spaces to sleep, groom, work, or relax.

Tranquility (Node 3), added in 2010, is another six-port node, mounted to the port side of Unity (Node 1). Its zenith (upper) port has been modified to become a parking spot for Dextre. Tranquility accommodates ISS air revitalization, oxygen generation, and water recovery systems, and also contains exercise equipment and a toilet for crewmembers.

Europe’s largest contribution to the construction of the ISS is the Columbus Research Laboratory, which supports scientific and technological research in a microgravity environment with experiments in materials science, fluid physics, life science, and technology.

From 2008 to 2015, ESA made cargo deliveries to the ISS with its Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs), launched from Ariane 5 rockets at the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana, and controlled from the ATV Control Center in Toulouse, France. The ATV was an autonomous logistical resupply vehicle, capable of navigating and docking with the ISS automatically. Like Japan’s HTV, the European vehicle was designed to be expendable.

The European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4), “Albert Einstein,” about to dock to the orbital outpost on June 15, 2013, following a 10-day period of free-flight. NASA photo

Cargo was also delivered to the ISS aboard the Space Shuttle, in reusable Italian-made containers known as Multipurpose Logistics Modules (MPLMs). With a design owing much to the earlier Spacelabs, the MPLMs were pressurized modules that allowed for the return of experiment payloads and other cargo to Earth. Just before the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011, one of the MPLMs, Leonardo, was converted into the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM, which now provides about 77 cubic meters of total storage volume for equipment, experiments, and supplies.

NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Expedition 24 flight engineer, looks through a window in the Cupola of the International Space Station. NASA photo

One of the station’s most popular features among astronauts, the Cupola, was also manufactured for NASA and ESA in Italy. Named for the raised observation deck on a railroad caboose, the Cupola, mounted on Tranquility’s nadir (lower) berthing port, is the largest window ever used in space. Its seven panes provide an expansive panoramic view of the Earth, and each is equipped with a shutter to protect it from contamination and collisions with micrometeorites or orbital debris. Designed to house robotic workstations, the Cupola can accommodate two crewmembers simultaneously.

On the Earth below, key European ground facilities for administering the ISS include:

The European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwjik, the Netherlands. The largest ESA establishment, the ESTEC is responsible for the technical preparation and management of ESA space projects, of which ISS is a significant part.
The Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC), at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich. Col-CC controls and operates the Columbus laboratory and coordinates the operation of European experiments.
The European Astronaut Centre, Cologne, Germany. The EAC is the home base for the European Astronaut Corps.
Several User Support and Operation Centres (USOCs) are distributed throughout Europe, where personnel use and implement European ISS payloads – developing experimental procedures, for example, or exchanging experimental data with ISS scientists.

The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos)

Russia entered the ISS project in 1993 as the world’s leading expert in long-term space exploration: The Soviet Union launched the first manned space station in 1971 and built the first multi-module space station, Mir, which operated in low-Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001. The first spacewalk was conducted by cosmonaut Alexey Leonov in 1965, and the record for the longest single human spaceflight – 438 consecutive days – is held by Valery Polyakov, who served aboard Mir from January 1994 to March 1995.