Building the International Space Station took an international effort. Along with the United States and Russia, the Japanese JAXA, the European ESA and the Canadian CSA space agencies were involved in the design and construction. Its purpose was to replace the aging Russian space station and provide a better, longer-term platform for space-based scientific research, and of course the interests of peace. It was hoped that countries cooperating in science together would be less likely to wage war on each other.

On this day, November 20, in 1998, the main module of the International Space Station, called Zarya (“Sunrise”) launched aboard a Russian rocket from Kazakhstan.

The Zarya module would provide power, communications, and control for the other modules eventually docking with it. Although it was built originally for the Mir space station, it was adopted for the ISS at the end of the Mir project. When the U.S.-built “Node 1” module docked with Zarya, the International Space Station officially came into being — although they would have to wait until the Russian habitation module Zvezda (“Star”) would dock in 2000 to begin human operations on the station.