On this day in space! Dec. 6, 1998: International Space Station assembly begins

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On Dec. 6, 1998, astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour officially began the construction of the International Space Station.

On Dec. 6, 1998, astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour officially began the construction of the International Space Station.

The STS-88 crew on NASA's space shuttle Endeavour brought together the first two components of the International Space Station, the Unity node at bottom and Zarya FGB module (at top), on Dec. 6, 1998. (Image credit: NASA)

By the time the Unity node went to space, Russia's first space station component, the Zarya module, had already been in orbit for a couple weeks.

So the STS-88 crew brought Unity to Zarya and connected the two components in orbit.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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