The document summarizes current space missions and cooperation between nations. It discusses the International Space Station, a cooperative effort between many countries to build an extraterrestrial habitat used for research since 1998. It also discusses reusable space crafts like NASA's Space Shuttle, made up of an orbiter, external fuel tank, and two solid rocket boosters. Nations now recognize that pooling resources makes space exploration more cost effective. The International Space Station project began in 1997 with a dozen nations cooperating to build the station by assembling components in space.