Space Station Freedom and Mir2

Originating during the Cold War, the International Space Station represents a union of several space station projects from various nations. During the early 1980s, NASA had planned to launch a modular space station called Freedom as a counterpart to the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations. Whilst the Soviets were planning to construct Mir-2 in the 1990s as a replacement for Mir. Because of budget and design constraints, however, Freedom never progressed past mock-ups and minor component tests.

With the fall of the Soviet Union ending the Cold War and Space Race, Freedom was nearly cancelled by the United States House of Representatives. The post-Soviet economic chaos in Russia also led to the cancellation of Mir-2, though only after its base block, DOS-8, had been constructed. Similar budgetary difficulties were being faced by other nations with space station projects, prompting US administration officials to start negotiations with partners in Europe, Russia, Japan, and Canada in the early 1990s to begin a collaborative, multi-national, space station project.

In June 1992, then US president George H. W. Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed to cooperate on space exploration by signing the Agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes. This agreement called for setting up a short, joint space programme, during which one US astronaut would board the Russian space station Mir and two Russian cosmonauts would board a space shuttle.

In September 1993, US Vice-president Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin announced plans for a new space station, which eventually became the International Space Station. They also agreed, in preparation for this new project, that the US would be heavily involved in the Mir programme in the years ahead, as part of an agreement that later included Space Shuttle orbiters docking with Mir.

The ISS programme was planned to combine the proposed space stations of all participating space agencies, including Freedom, Mir-2 (with DOS-8 later becoming Zvezda), ESA's Columbus, and the Japanese Kibō laboratory. When the first module, Zarya, was launched in 1998, the station was expected to be completed by 2003. Because of delays, however, the estimated completion date has been put back to 2011.

Source: Wikipedia.