Sign in

Private company

Origins of the International Space Station

The International Space Station programme represents a combination of three national space station projects: the Russian/Soviet Mir-2, NASA's Space Station Freedom including the Japanese Kibō laboratory, and the European Columbus space stations. Canadian robotics supplement these projects.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

  • Legal formjoint venture1

See how the biggest companies compare on our leaderboards

STS-134 International Space Station after undocking
Photo: NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

The International Space Station programme represents a combination of three national space station projects: the Russian/Soviet Mir-2, NASA's Space Station Freedom including the Japanese Kibō laboratory, and the European Columbus space stations. Canadian robotics supplement these projects.2

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3