EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION RESEARCH RESULTS DURING THE ASSEMBLY AND UTILIZATION YEARS: 2000-
2011
Several years before the first module of the International Space Station (ISS) was launched in
1998, an international collaboration between the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), European
Space Agency (ESA), Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), State Space Corporation of
Russia (Roscosmos), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was
developed. This partnership has worked together for nearly 2 decades to complete one of the
most ambitious engineering projects ever conceived, and has initiated a research program that
has grown since “Assembly Complete” in 2011.
Even as the vehicle was being built during the ISS assembly phase, the potential benefits of
space-based research and development were demonstrated, including the advancement of
scientific knowledge based on experiments conducted in space, development and testing of
new technologies, and derivation of Earth applications from new understanding. The
international utilization strategy is based on research spanning several disciplines. The ability to
complete follow-up investigations in a period of months allows researchers to make rapid
advances based on new knowledge gained from ISS activities. Now, during the utilization phase,
and with extension of the ISS through at least 2024, the ISS partners work together to track the
objectives, accomplishments, and applications of the new knowledge gained in a way that will
impact humanity like no laboratory on Earth.
NASA’s ISS Program
Science office
maintains an online
experiment database
(www.nasa.gov/iss-
science) that tracks
and communicates ISS
research activities
across the entire ISS
partnership, and it is
continuously updated.
It captures ISS
experiment
summaries and
results, and includes
citations to the result
publications and
patents as they
become available.
After any one
research activity is
Distribution by discipline of NASA’s ISS experiments for Expeditions 0 through 40.
Graph courtesy of JSC/NASA.