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Space stations have been the mainstay and "work horses" of the international aerospace industry for the past three decades. They are highly valued as medical laboratories for learning about the effects of space on humans, astronomy platforms for studying distant stars and galaxies, observation posts for viewing and analyzing environmentally sensitive regions on Earth, and springboards for future human travel to a variety of planets within our solar system and possibly beyond. From the early and relatively simple Skylab, Salyut, and Mir to the modern International Space Station, these platforms have been home to many astronauts from many nations investigating scientific phenomena in a microgravity environment 250 miles in space whirling by at 17,000 miles per hour.
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Space Stations by James Barter
San Diego • Detroit • New York • San Francisco • Cleveland • New Haven, Conn. • Waterville, Maine • London • Munich
On cover: A U.S. space shuttle docks with the International Space Station in orbit above the earth.
© 2004 by Lucent Books. Lucent Books is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Lucent Books® and Thomson Learning™ are trademarks used herein under license. For more information, contact Lucent Books 27500 Drake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535 Or you can visit our Internet site at http://www.gale.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution, or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Barter, James, 1946– Space stations / by James Barter. p. cm. — (The Lucent library of science and technology) Includes bibliographical