International Space Station celebrates 10th birthday

NASA couldn't have staged it any better: 10 people in orbit for Thursday's 10th anniversary of the world's most elaborate and expensive housing project, the international space station.

On Nov. 20, 1998, the first part of the space station was launched by the Russians from Kazakhstan. NASA followed up two weeks later with piece No. 2 carried up by a space shuttle. Astronauts and cosmonauts moved in two years later, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The space station has grown into a behemoth outpost 220 miles up, home to three people at any given time — soon to be six.

Three-quarters complete, the total mass is 627,000 pounds. NASA says it's about the size of a five-bedroom house.

Some other fascinating factoids: The space station has traveled 1.3 billion miles, orbited Earth more than 57,300 times, hosted 167 people from 15 countries, and served up more than 19,000 meals.

The price tag, from start to finish, is often quoted at $100 billion. That includes money spent not only by the United States and Russia, but also Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency. NASA disputes that amount and estimates its share at $44 billion, including shuttle launch costs.

"The ISS is the largest ever experiment in international technological cooperation," said John Logsdon, a historian at the National Air and Space Museum in the US capital.

"I think it's a necessary stepping stone to long-term human activities in new areas of operations," Logsdon told AFP. The station is "off the planet and it's the first step outward -- not an end in itself, but a step along the way."

"With the International Space Station, we have learned so many things, and we're going to take that knowledge and apply it to flying to the moon and Mars," said Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, now aboard the station. "Everything we're learning so close to home, only 240 miles away from the planet, we can apply to the moon 240,000 miles away."