International Space Station got its celestial start in Houston

This story originally published Sept. 4, 2016. It has been updated and is being republished as part of the Chronicle's 125 project.

For about two minutes every night, an object appears in the sky so brilliant that it can be seen from anywhere in Houston despite the city's bright lights.

Spot the space station

The International Space Station is visible when the sky is dark but the station itself is sunlit, usually around dawn or dusk. Because its orbit constantly shifts, viewing windows come in brief clusters that last a few days, followed by gaps of a week or more. Passes typically last anywhere from 1 to 6 minutes.

Check dates, times and viewing coordinates for Houston by visiting the NASA Spot The Station tracker., nasa.gov/spot-the-station/

The gleaming object 260 miles above the Earth is the International Space Station, longer than a football field and the largest man-made artifact ever placed in space. This marvel symbolizing human ingenuity, international cooperation and the urge to expand beyond the confines of Earth was nurtured in Houston.

The astronauts who float through its tubular sections are trained at the Johnson Space Center. The space station program offices are headquartered there, and its day-to-day operations are monitored and directed by Houston Mission Control.

The $100 billion outpost in space hurtling around the Earth at 17,500 mph is essentially a giant laboratory housing science projects from all over the world that are the basis for advancements in health and technology. At least 250 scientific experiments are underway on the space station at any time. Research in zero gravity has allowed biological research not possible on Earth, increasing the understanding, for example, of how bacteria cause food poisoning.

The station also is a proving ground to prepare for launching humans farther into space, allowing the study of how humans can survive in a void bombarded by deadly radiation, extreme temperatures and zero gravity.

"It's helping us to go farther out and prepare for the exploration of asteroids and Mars and to explore the solar system," said Kelly Humphries, retired Johnson Space Center news chief.

This monumental technological achievement came to pass despite fierce opposition from budget-cutting congressmen and skeptical scientists who preferred to see the money used for research done on Earth.

The term "space station" was first used in 1923 by Romanian-born physicist Hermann Oberth, one of the early pioneers of space flight. He was mentor to German aerospace engineer Werner Von Braun, credited with inventing the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany and developing the Saturn V rocket that carried the first U.S. space station into orbit.

Von Braun's concept of a space station was published in Collier's magazine in 1952, describing a circular structure with a 250-foot diameter that would spin to provide gravity through centrifugal force.

A version of Von Braun's idea was first put into practice by the former Soviet Union, scoring a triumph over arch rival the United States after losing the race to the moon. The Soviets placed the Salyut I space station into orbit in 1971.

Two years later, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched Skylab. Three successive crews worked on Skylab before it was abandoned in 1974 after a year of use. A plan to revive Skylab by using the space shuttle was abandoned after shuttle development fell behind schedule. The vacant station came to a fiery end in 1979, its flaming debris crashing into western Australia.

Planning for the next U.S. space station began at a conference in 1981. International cooperation was taken for granted, although the initial plan was for the U.S. to assume responsibility for design and construction. Europe and Japan were interested in cooperating early on, but the project gained momentum only after then-President Ronald Reagan backed the project in 1984. Salyut 7, the last in the Soviet Salyut series of space stations, blinked insolently from the sky, and for Reagan it was imperative that the U.S. show its technological superiority. Salyut 7 went dark in 1985, but was replaced that same year by the improved Mir station that would remain in orbit until 2001.

The U.S. response to the Soviet space station was named Freedom. Responsibility for overseeing the Freedom program was handed to the Johnson Space Center.

As the Soviets set new records in space with the Mir, the Freedom program was beset by cost overruns and budget cuts. In June 1993 an attempt to scrap the program failed by a single vote of 215 to 216 in the House of Representatives.

That same year, the administration of then-President Bill Clinton decided that the enormous financial and technological challenge of building a space station could only be done in cooperation with Russia, the successor state to the disbanded Soviet Union.

NASA discarded the Freedom program, using some of its concepts for an International Space Station to be built in cooperation with Russia, the European Union, Japan and Canada as the major contributors. "The international partnership played a huge role in getting it off the ground and sustaining it," said Daniel Huot, the former Johnson Space Center spokesman who is now communications manager at SpaceX.

NASA's Johnson Space Center took the leading role in cooperation with Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

A Russian Proton rocket rose from a launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November 1998 carrying the first section of the International Space Station, the Zarya module paid for by the U.S. and built by Russia. Two weeks later, the space shuttle Endeavour hauled the U.S.-built Unity module into orbit and berthed it with Zarya, beginning the most ambitious space construction program ever undertaken.

Astronauts and cosmonauts lived and worked on the space station as it was assembled piece-by-piece in more than 30 missions until the final section was bolted into place in 2011.

2026 update

The International Space Station will likely be retired in 2028.

After NASA successfully launched astronauts around the moon with its Artemis II mission in April, the agency plans to return humans to the lunar surface in 2028. It will continue sending astronauts and robotic explorers to build a moon base and eventually journey on to Mars.

America is now in a moon race with China, which is working to land humans on the lunar surface before 2030. The moon landing will take precedence over NASA's space station plans.

Artemis III will launch to low-Earth orbit in 2027 to test the human landing systems that will lower astronauts to the moon on Artemis IV and V in 2028. 

"Shifting NASA workforce priority to the surface, which has lots of advantages for safety, tech demonstration and science, is really the proving ground for future Mars initiatives," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said earlier this year. "It does not preclude revisiting the orbital outpost in the future."

Dana Weigel, NASA's International Space Station program manager, said the government-run platform has not seen any breakthrough products, capabilities or services that generate significant demand. Tourism hasn't really materialized as a market, and other government have only paid for short missions, preferring in-kind barters or exchanges for longer missions.

So NASA is considering a new approach. It could create a new space station core that attaches to the International Space Station and has spaces for commercial companies to dock modules. The core and these commercial modules would then detach from the International Space Station and become a platform for maturing commercial stations and growing demand.

Andrea Leinfelder contributed to this report.

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