Ten years ago today — July 12, 2000 — the Zvezda (“star”) service module was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
(Zvezda module diagram. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)
The module docked with the nascent International Space Station (ISS) a few days later, and became “the early cornerstone” of the station.
If you want to know more about how the space station was built, this NASA page outlines the sequence of assembly for the ISS.
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