Space Stations first steps to Stars

After loosing the space with USA, Soviets began Space Stations Program and they build ALMAZ (Diamond in Russian) with military purpose it was put in orbit 1971. That type of stations has short life periods but they were a success except the Soyuz 11 that lost all crew reentering earth, Soviet Union gain lots of experience, like keeping cosmonauts more time on space, long distance control of Soyuz.

SALYUT SPACE STATION

USA also began exploring Space stations with Skylab in 1973 but with lots of problems since launching, their space panels was damage by meteorites and NASA lost interest, Skylab fall over Australia in 1979.

SKYLAB VIEW OVER THE PACIFIC

MIR (Peace in Russian) achieve lots of records and it was the most advance station, it was in orbit for nearly 13 years, the most important modules were Kvant, Kvant 2, Kristall, Spektr, Priroda, in that place Valery Polyakov achive a record of 437.7 days on space. MIR was abandon on may 23, 2001 it was crash against Pacific Ocean because Russia needed to put all their money and efforts on ISS, MIR was the home of 105 astronauts, 42 were cosmonauts (Russians) and 63 of different countries.

Now the biggest project is ISS (International Space Station) this project is manage by Russia, USA, ESA (European Space Agency) its 360 km beneath earth, circles the earth every 92 minutes and weights 183.282 Kilograms. Now the project faces a problem because NASA has to give more money to a program to Return to moon.