Spacelab, science laboratory designed and built by the European Space Agency (ESA) to fly aboard the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space shuttle. In the early 1970s the ESA was deciding on its strategy for space at the same time that NASA was beginning its space shuttle programme. The ESA proposed a joint scientific programme and in 1973 NASA accepted the ESA's offer to build Spacelab. The first Spacelab flew in 1983. Spacelab permitted the type of research that would occur aboard a space station while NASA was still working on plans to build a permanent space station in orbit. Using Spacelab, shuttle astronauts studied the effects of weightlessness on materials and living things and observed stars, the Sun, and the Earth's atmosphere.

     The United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Canada, and Japan are collaborating on the International Space Station. The plans called for the first section to be launched on a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome and the second to be launched on the space shuttle from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The station is due for completion in 2004, after five years' construction work in orbit. Future space stations may spin to provide artificial gravity, like the wheel-shaped station in the classic science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick. Artificial gravity may be a medical necessity for long-term use of space stations: already cosmonauts are forced to undertake hours of exercise every day to avoid the weakening of bones and muscles that can result from long-term exposure to weightlessness.



   
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