(Courtesy to Microsoft Encarta for these photographs.)

The first space stations were Salyut (Russian) and Skylab (U.S.). These space stations were used to perform experiments out in space. They gave us valuable information about the stars too. People could dock up to a space station and enter it. Astronauts or cosmonauts could live in space for long periods of time. For example, two cosmonauts, Vladimir Titov and Muso Manarov, lived the Russian space station Mir for 366 days from April 1987 to December 21, 1988.

On April 19, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the space station Salyut 1. There were several dockings with the space station. A three member crew of Soyuz 11 docked with Salyut 1 and stayed at the Salyut 1 for a period of 24 days. Afterward, on the way back to land, all three crew members died. Later on, it was found that there was an air leak, and because the crew wore no space suits, they died very quickly. The USSR launched another space station called Salyut 2. Unfortunately, this space station broke apart before any person could live inside of it. Mir was launched was a successor to the Salyut stations. It could hold a two member crew and it had six docking areas.

The U.S. launched Skylab in May 25, 1973 as a space laboratory. Skylab was much larger than the Salyut space stations by almost three and a half times larger. It could also hold up to three crew members. Skylab was used also to make observations of the Sun and other astronomical bodies, make medical studies of what would happen to a human in space, and do other scientific experiments. There were in all a total of three dockings that took place. Afterwards on July 11, 1979, Skylab fell through the Earth's atmosphere and most of the debris landed in Australia.

The Internaional Space Station, which began construction in 1998, will be finished in 2004. It is a joint operation of the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, and a thirteen member European Space Agency. The ISS will take up space enough to fill up 2 football fields and it can house 7 astronauts. Overall, the ISS has 100 modules used for experiments, observations, and research. All of it is put together by astronauts in many launches. It is to be completed by 2004.

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