The first module of the ISS reached orbit
On this day · 20 November 1998
A Russian-built, US-funded cargo block launched from Kazakhstan, becoming the seed of the largest structure in orbit.
On November 20, 1998, a Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying Zarya, the first component of the International Space Station. Its name means “sunrise.”
Zarya, also called the Functional Cargo Block, was a hybrid of the new partnership: built in Russia but funded by the United States under a roughly $220 million NASA contract. In the station’s early years it supplied power, propulsion, and steering until later modules took over those jobs.
One launch, and the most complex international engineering project in history had a foothold in orbit.
Alone, Zarya was just a 20-ton cylinder circling Earth. Weeks later, on December 7, 1998, the Space Shuttle Endeavour delivered the US-built Unity node and the crew bolted the two together, joining the first pieces of a station that would grow for over a decade and eventually span the size of a football field.
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