Live in orbit: Happy 10th Anniversary

Ten years ago today, a Russian-built, U.S.-financed space tug dubbed Zarya blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, headed for a construction zone where the United States, Russian, Canada, Japan and Europe aimed to raise the International Space Station.

Two weeks later, shuttle Endeavour and seven astronauts hauled up the U.S. Unity module, and the first two building blocks of the station were linked in low Earth orbit.

A decade later, the station now is the largest spacecraft ever assembled, and many say the construction effort represents the most complex engineering feat of all time -- a true wonder of the world.

Click to enlarge the NASA photo (above) of the station as it appeared when an assembly crew departed in June after adding the laboratory module for the Japanese Kibo science research facility.

Right here is a NASA photo of Zarya -- which is the Russian word for "dawn" or "sunrise" -- as Endeavour approached it during the STS-88 mission in December 1998, a mission commanded by Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana.

More than 100,000 people on four continents and in 37 states across the U.S. have had a hand in raising what amounts to a city in space.

"The station's capability and sheer size today are truly amazing," NASA station program manager Mike Suffredini said in a statement. "The tremendous technological achievement in orbit is matched only by the cooperation and perseverance of its partners on the ground. We have overcome differences in language, geography and engineering philosophies to succeed."

The station now is a 313.5-ton behemoth that has an internal volume in excess of 25,000 cubic feet, an area comparable to a five-bedroom house. That's more than double the mass of Russia's Mir space station after its assembly was completed in the late 1990s.

Since Zarya's launch at 1:40 a.m. EST Nov. 20, 1998, there have been 29 additional construction flights to the station: 27 aboard shuttles and two additional Russian launches.

Some fun facts:

++ 167 people representing 15 countries have visited the complex.

++ Astronauts and cosmonauts have eaten more than 19,000 meals aboard the station since the first crew took up residence on Nov. 1, 2000.

++The station's central truss now spans 291 feet, and its solar arrays are large enough to cover six basketball courts.

++ 115 spacewalks have been carried out as part of the assembly and maintenance of the station; astronauts and cosmonauts have chalked up more than 700 hours working the the deadly vacuum environment to get the job done.

++ The station now has circled Earth more than 57,300 times, traveling a distance of 1,432,725,000 miles. Had the outpost been flying in a straight line, it now would be outside the orbit of the minor planet Pluto, cruising into the outer reaches of the solar system.

Eight assembly and outfitting missions remain on the construction schedule before NASA's shuttle fleet is retired in late 2010.

Alan Thirkettle, station program manager for the European Space Agency, thinks the project is an amazing example of what nations can do when they work together.

"Sixty years ago, people in Europe were fighting one another. Now, they're working together, working on spacecraft and space stations," Thirkettle said in a statement.

"Two decades ago, the Cold War was still going on and here we are working with the Russians, the Americans, the Japanese, the Europeans, everyone working together. It seems a far better thing to be doing than what we were doing 60 years ago."

ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the cool NASA images of the International Space Station now and the embryonic outpost in late November 1998. Then click the enlarged image to get an even bigger, more detailed view. The top photo shows the station as it appeared when a crew on Discovery departed the outpost after installing the Kibo laboratory module in June. The second shows the Zarya space tug -- also known by the Russian acronymn FGB -- as shuttle Endeavour approached it in December 1998 on the first station construction mission. You can click to enblarge that photo, too. And click it again for any even bigger version. Pretty cool stuff.