What an incredible sight.
A Hollywood special effect, you're thinking?
But, no, it's for real.
It's the International Space Station.
250 miles above us right now, it's being built ...
by just a few dozen astronauts.
If you'll come along with me, we'll go behind the scenes ...
and find out how these extraordinary people do it.
Okay, Chris, I'm just going to head on back to the aft of the payload bay here.
Roger, I see you.
What a beautiful view out the port side there.
Yeah, it's spectacular.
Working outside in the vacuum of space is a dangerous business.
First, you calculate all the risks.
Then, you learn how to deal with them.
Chris, it looks like I've drifted off structure here a little bit.
I'll try and pull myself back in.
It looks like your tether is disconnected. I show it coiling away from you.
And, Scott, you've headed out over the port nose of the vehicle.
It looks you're out the port side.
They should be able to see you out windows 1, 2, or 3.
- Okay, I'm going for the SAFER. - Okay, I agree.
- Deploying the hand controller. - I see it.
Okay, it swung out. Bring it up to the work envelope.
- I got it in front of you. I see it. - Power on. Got AH Light.
- Looks like you're starting to correct now. - Beginning to close.
Looks nice.
- I've got it. - Your feet are clear.
Back on structure. Let's get some tethers on.
Looks good, I concur.
I see you got a good solid, your feet are clear below.
For you and me, the virtual reality lab at the Johnson Space Center ...
might be the ultimate video game.
- Cheated death again. We're back on. - I concur.
But if you're Scott Parazynski and Chris Hadfield ...
it's where you learn how to escape from your worst nightmare.
- Nice job. I like that. It was very smooth. - You're absolutely right.
They're a construction team.
One of many that will fly a whole series of missions ...
to assemble the station in orbit.
Another day at the office.
It takes many parts to make a whole space station.
Some modules are so big and heavy ...
there's just enough rocket power to launch them one at a time.
They've been designed and built by thousands of people ...
in 16 different countries.
Some pieces are tested here at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Others in Russia.
But will they all fit together when they arrive in space?
The first station component was designed and built in Russia.
It's called Zarya. It'll be boosted to orbit by the Proton rocket.
With a thrust of 2.5 million pounds ...
you don't want to be anywhere close by when they light that fuse.
Proton is an expendable rocket.
After delivering Zarya to orbit, it'll fall back to Earth into a safe zone.
Other station parts will be hauled up by a fleet of ships ...
of a very different design:
NASA's space shuttles.
They're more like hi-tech delivery trucks.
One of these will close in on Zarya ...
then the crew will grab it with the shuttle's arm.
Houston, Endeavour, we have Zarya firmly attached to the orbiter.
We're halfway home for the day.
- Nice job. - All right.
It was a big moment for the crew ...
especially astronaut Nancy Currie, who operated the arm.
She sure didn't want to miss.
That was the longest 15 minutes of my entire life.
Okay, back to the procedures.
All right. Wait, give me my rendezvous procedures.
The American module Unity is mounted in the cargo bay.
C.J., the pilot, fires the shuttle's thrusters to push Unity upward ...
and mate it to Zarya.
Got capture.
Houston, Endeavour, we have capture of Zarya.
To the crew of the good ship Endeavour, that's terrific.
The International Space Station is born.
The shuttle will leave it here and return to Earth.
The foundation is laid. Now it's up to the builders.
Their job is an extreme high-wire act.
Like building the great bridges and cathedrals in times past.
The six million gallons of water in this tank ...
provide the closest thing there is to working weightless.
You practice on life-size models of the station.
Before it's finally finished, these crews will have made 160 space walks.
That's two-and-a-half times all the previous space walks ever done.
Critics say that's too many. The risk is too high.
All eyes are on the next flight.
The shuttle Discovery will take the first assembly crew to station.
The commander of the flight is Brian Duffy.
Pamela Melroy is the pilot.
We're in orbit, 250 miles up.
Close enough to read the labels.
The station is 45 feet away.
That's Africa going by behind it.
We're getting ready to dock with our house in space.
Our crew's going to hook up the basics: wiring, plumbing, and phone.
One of the key members of the team is mission specialist Koichi Wakata.
When I was 5 years old and I saw the Apollo lunar landing ...
that was the start of my longing for space flight.
But I thought that kind of thing was beyond my reach ...
something that was, at that time, impossible to achieve or to do ...
as a Japanese.
Koichi's installing the heart of the station's systems.
It's called the "Z1-truss".
I was moving the robot arm very slowly ...
since the "Z1-truss" weighs about 18,000 pounds.
And Koichi nails it.
- 4 RTLs. - And we've got 4 RTLs.
Another piece perfectly in place.
Koichi, you the man!
Everybody was cheering me ...
and somebody was saying, "You are the man."
That was a great moment.
- You should have a 50mm camera. - I've got a camera with a 50mm socket.
Leroy Chiao and Bill MacArthur, known as Billy Mac ...
get ready for the first space walk.
And a three-eighths ratchet drive with a 2-inch extension on it.
In their suits, they can survive up to eight hours ...
in temperatures of plus to minus 250 degrees.
Swinging '60s, here I come, baby! Yeah!
In conditions like that, you've got to keep your sense of humor.
These guys are huge fans of Austin Powers.
The commander gives Leroy and Billy Mac their send-off in the airlock ...
before they move outside.
The second team, Jeff Wisoff and Mike Lopez-Alegria, known as L.A ...
seal off the inside hatch behind them.
Their number one task is to deploy the next piece:
The station's communications antenna.
How cool is this?
They push it manually into place.
The all-important telephone is in.
Now, the wiring.
These cables are being laid out for another crew to connect ...
on a later flight.
They'll provide power to the science lab when it arrives.
You guys, the World Series, the Super Bowl ....
They don't know what pressure is.
Every day, I operated the robotic arm ...
to help by putting one space walker ...
at the tip of the robot arm to move him to the location ...
that he needs to do space walk activities.
Leroy's going to install this toolbox for future crews to use.
Inside is an array of special tools ...
any Home Improvement fan would envy.
Mike, there is no problem maintaining a death grip on the handrails.
It's a strange feeling. My toes are curling right up.
You always want to be sure you're securely anchored.
But if you did come unhooked, here's a device that could save your life.
It's a personal jetpack called SAFER.
It's also very cool.
It fits on your back and could power you back to safety.
We saw it put to the test in the virtual reality lab.
Go ahead and power ....
Now we're going to try it out for real.
Jeff is riding on the arm, watching ...
in case anything goes wrong.
L.A., flying on the right, is now powered by his jetpack.
Just in case, he's attached by a thin wire.
But he didn't need it after all. The test is a great success.
Discovery pulls away, leaving the space station in orbit.
So far, all the pieces have connected without a hitch.
At the top is Zvezda. That's where the crews will live.
Below it is Zarya, kind of a big float-through closet for storage.
And at the bottom, the truss and the Unity node ...
where the next additions will be attached.
The station's now ready for people.
We're in Kazakhstan, at the Russian spaceport.
Yuri Gagarin, the very first man in space, launched from here.
Forty years later, this crew is getting ready to live on the space station.
Two are Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev.
The crew's commander is an American, Bill Shepherd, known as Shep.
His wife, Beth, is the astronaut fitness trainer.
I was fortunate in that I was there in the capacity of ...
his strength and conditioning coach ...
whereas the Russian families were not able to come at all.
They stayed in Star City.
In the glare of the world's press ...
it isn't easy to find a few last quiet moments alone together.
This is the walkway they began after the first cosmonaut flew.
Everybody that flew has a tree here. Gagarin's tree would be 40 years old now.
When Shep and I were walking down that row of trees ...
which is very historic ...
it was hard for me to believe that we were finally here ...
because he had worked so hard.
We had worked so hard for him to be there.
And for us to finally be there together ...
to think about the people that had come and gone ...
and to know that this person next to me, my husband ...
was going to be a part of that history ...
that was a very special time for us.
Shep and his crew will be gone in space for over four months.
The International Space Station is a way for us to learn ...
how we can go to other planets and explore other ways ...
to live outside Earth.
I think that's really exciting. I wanted to go too.
The crew will launch to station aboard a Soyuz rocket ...
the workhorse of the Russian space program.
An unbelievable 406 launches have gone from this pad.
Very unexpected for me, being out on the launch pad ...
very foggy day ...
having several hundred people at the base of the rocket ...
which for an American launch would be very unusual and unheard of.
Being able to have such close contact with friends and family who are right there ...
right in the middle of those final moments before you go fly ...
was really exciting, really special.
After everything we went through ...
seeing your face on launch day made it all worth it.
Let's go do it!
He was so happy.
Get those shuttles ready.
Imagine, three guys and their gear ...
inside a capsule the size of a Volkswagen Beetle ...
and it's a two-day trip.
The biggest risk is just getting out of the Earth's atmosphere ...
and to a safe orbit.
Once you're at the end of the powered flight ...
and you're floating around in orbit, then you can sit back and say:
"Boy, I'm glad that we have gotten that done successfully."
Sitting in your couch with your knees bent up almost to your chin ...
for hours at a time, it's pretty uncomfortable.
But the Soyuz is very reliable.
It's got a lot of capability to get you up into space ...
and get you back on a bad day.
The house will be dark when they arrive.
They can't be sure what lies in wait for them.
Their job is to open everything up for the first time ...
then get it all working.
Be prepared for the unexpected.
They're set to go.
But after two days in a capsule with your knees in your chin ...
you've got a few other priorities.
Put together an ace Soyuz pilot like Yuri ...
Sergei, a man who's already logged more than a year-and-a-half in space ...
and a Navy SEAL for a commander ...
and you've got the right stuff for the job.
After we got the node open, it started to seem like ...
a really expansive place, because we all have memories ...
of being in much more confined spaces like Soyuz and even the shuttle.
When I came to the Zvezda for the first time ...
it looked for me as home.
And that was a place where we stay and live and sleep.
I was thinking we were here ....
It has life-support equipment ...
guidance and navigation ...
jets to control the station, to move it around in space.
If we weren't here, we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing ....
We have several windows looking down.
We have to exercise every day to stay fit.
And even after a relatively short flight ...
you feel the difference in your muscles.
When we did this exercise near the window ...
every time you turn the pedal, you fly several kilometers.
It's more impressive to say, "I ran the bike from Paris to China."
Probably the nicest thing in sleep compartment is the window.
From space, you don't see any borders.
You really don't see where United States ends and Mexico starts.
You feel yourself part of humankind ...
not just man from one country or one city.
Of course, on Earth, we take things like air and water for granted.
But here, the supply is limited.
You can't survive without it, so you have to recycle it continuously.
You need a degree in plumbing to keep all your life-support systems running.
And breakdowns do happen.
In the future ...
crews traveling to other planets will have to rely on repair skills like this.
There are no replacement parts available on Mars.
KD5FAL, this is NA1SS. Go ahead with your question.
AB5A, this is Adam Gittleman.
My question for you is: What did it take for you to become an astronaut? Over.
What's the best way to become an astronaut?
To stay in school and be the best student you can.
That's because education is a lifelong thing.
It doesn't stop when you leave school and walk out the door.
It's something that'll go on for your whole life.
That's what we'd recommend.
Hi, I'm Santosh Bawani.
How do you take showers in space, and if you use water ...
how does the water flow?
On ham radio, kids all over the world ...
can talk to the crews about their home in space.
Soon there's to be a huge new addition to it.
Back at Kennedy Space Center, Destiny, the station's science laboratory ...
perhaps its most important component ...
is loaded into the cargo bay of the orbiter Atlantis.
Shep, Yuri, and Sergei are about to have company.
Welcome, Atlantis.
Hey, guys, come on in.
Atlantis is here, with the long-awaited laboratory.
Like kids in a candy store ...
the shuttle crew gleefully explores the station for the first time.
Good to be here.
In honor of the occasion, they wear very special socks.
Houston, Atlantis, broadcasting from Destiny.
Copy, a great first moment here.
And the lab looks and feels and smells great ...
and it looks like all the hard work has really paid off.
It's a beautiful piece of hardware.
A lot of these flights are transfer flights. So we are transferring various supplies.
We bring them clothing and water. That's a water bag.
Every now and then, we bring them a woman.
It'll take a few more flights to get the lab up and running.
But when it's ready, we can do experiments ...
and make discoveries here in zero gravity ...
that we just can't back on Earth.
Well done.
Atlantis pulls away, cargo bay empty.
There are probably times, certainly over the holidays ...
when you were able to correspond by email ...
talk over the radio to friends and family on the ground.
You knew there were things going on that you'd like to be a part of ...
and you were missing.
Shep's been busy dreaming up a Christmas surprise for Beth.
His name is Captain.
I picked up the little puppy ...
and that's when Shep told me, "Merry Christmas."
Now Shep's dog, Jake, who's missed him a lot, has a brand-new pal.
With Shep being gone a lot, Jake was my buddy.
Captain is my special present from space.
Shep, Sergei, and Yuri will soon be home.
The second crew is getting ready to take their place.
Just imagine what you might be feeling in the last hours before your launch.
The beach near the launch pad provides a haven for astronaut Susan Helms.
I just let my mind wander as I'm walking along the beach ...
looking at the waves. I noticed dolphins out there.
These are the types of things I'm not gonna get to see ...
up close and personal for several months.
And I guess I realize now that I'm going to miss this.
Right now, I'm starting to feel a little bit homesick about Earth ...
even though I haven't left it yet.
Before launch, the beach house retreat near the Kennedy Space Port ...
is a quiet escape for Susan's crewmates, Yury Usachev and Jim Voss.
The beach is such a beautiful place. It does give you a good feeling ...
for the wide expanses of the Earth that we won't have ...
while we're in the space station.
Yury, the Expedition 2 Crew Commander, is Russian.
Susan and Jim are American mission specialists.
They'll launch to the station aboard the shuttle Discovery.
This suit feels good.
What I'll really miss are the normal things I like to do ...
like working in my garage, working on my airplane.
Taking a little time to be alone and work quietly.
I expect that when I get up there ...
every evening before I go to bed, I'm gonna wanna write notes to people ...
and hope that they get sent down while we're sleeping and they write back.
The great thing about having trained together for three or four years ...
is that Jim, Yury, and I have become a bit of a family.
And we have come to sense each other's moods and feelings ...
to the point where, when one person ends up having difficulties of some kind ...
and they need to get away, the rest of us understand.
Bye-bye.
"T" minus 12, all systems aboard Discovery are go.
Eleven. This mission continuing in permanent human presence in space.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Go for main engine start.
Houston is now controlling. The rolling over is complete ...
and Discovery is now in a heads down, wing-flipped position ...
carrying the next resident crew to the International Space Station.
Two days later, Discovery has caught up with the station and closes for docking.
Expedition 2 is ready to relieve Expedition 1.
Shep and the crew get a spectacular view from Destiny's window.
That's all I gave you. Does that get you in there?
The first time I came into station, of course ...
the first impression is, "My gosh, this is so big."
And then I was surprised with how much work ...
Expedition 1 had accomplished, particularly with the laboratory.
Jim, Yury, and Susan are already at work in the lab.
They can grow large crystals here that we can't grow in Earth's gravity.
By studying how they have formed ...
we can learn how to make more effective medicines to cure diseases.
If we ever expect to go to Mars, we have to understand ...
how the human body will react to a really long flight.
The human research facility will be an excellent source ...
for performing human experiments to make sure we understand ...
what happens to the human body in space.
It has ultrasound technology ...
it's got storage for many other meters and sensors ...
that we can attach to the human body to wear ...
and then send the data to the scientists on the Earth ...
so that they can analyze it.
It's time for the departing commander to brief his successor.
Shep and his crew have done their job brilliantly.
They're handing over a station that's completely up and running ...
ready to realize its true potential.
An American and a Russian kind of exchanging this job ....
It was, to me, a historic chapter in space.
A reflection of what humans can accomplish.
With a last look at their dwelling in space, the crew heads home.
The new tenants have already done some interior decorating.
I brought about 40 snapshots.
Of course, my wife, my daughter, and my friends, my dog Cody.
The popcorn came up already popped.
Once in a while, some pieces get away from us ...
but they float up to the filters, and we can just clean them out ...
when we do our weekly cleaning.
Yury Vladimirovich Usachev is an extremely experienced cosmonaut.
He likes working with his hands with tools and is just a really nice guy.
They're so much alike, the two of them. It was really funny.
Each of them would come up with ideas and get the other one sucked in ...
to working on some sort of home project.
They're a couple of hardware guys and I'm a software girl.
It's great to live in Zero-G because ...
you basically can become the world's best sportsman.
You can lift up things like these bags of water ...
which weigh probably over 100 pounds apiece ...
and just move them like they're feathers.
And so it's really nice for someone like me ...
who's never been much of an athlete ...
to be able to do all these superhuman things in space ...
that I normally wouldn't get to do.
The express rack Susan is installing ...
contains experiments that could show us the way ...
to more powerful computer chips or lighter metals.
Yury just discovered one day that the onion had a small sprout ...
growing out the top.
So we placed it in a plastic bag with a washcloth wrapped around it.
It sprouted, roots are growing.
It was nice to have it around, not so much to eat ...
but just to see a green growing plant.
The MACE experiment is how Susan entertained herself on the weekends.
I really liked working with this experiment.
It was like playing with a big toy. It had moving parts and a brain.
When you launch a satellite into space ...
the control system is the designer's best guess ...
of how it should control its own sensors and appendages.
This experiment ...
was trying to understand how you could design a control system ...
to teach itself to work better.
Over Honshu island in Japan, the shuttle Endeavour ...
has arrived with a shipping container in its cargo bay.
It's one of three high-tech moving vans ...
built by the Italian Space Agency.
This one's called Raffaello.
Inside it, astronauts from three countries are at work.
Chris Hadfield is Canadian, Yuri Lonchakov was born in Kazakhstan ...
and Umberto Guidoni is from Rome.
Working in space really makes people bond ...
and I guess the fact that many countries ...
are working on building the space station ...
is bringing the culture and history of each country in the space station.
And somehow it changes, a little bit, each of us.
It's not just an adventuresome place to live ...
but actually a pleasant and challenging and interesting place to live.
I would really like the opportunity to spend a part of my life there.
What struck me, though, was to watch the crew that's living there ...
to see them view Earth as a separate place.
Earth is something completely separate from them.
It's an interesting step, I think, for humans ...
to get to the point where you are now separated from your mother ...
and you are starting to view yourself as more of a single separate entity ...
heading off into the rest of the universe.
If we were to have to leave the space station in the Soyuz vehicle ...
we'd put on the SOKOL suits.
All the material that's in the front is where you get into the suit.
So you gather it up and then wrap two rubber bands around it ...
to seal it so that it holds pressure.
To get inside is a real challenge.
It's one of these types of capsules where you've got ...
three humans laying side by side like sardines.
The Russians, on occasion, do provide two Soyuz spacecraft ...
and there's usually just one prime parking spot.
So we need to do a bit of choreography ...
in order to get the right Soyuz in the right place.
All three crew members need to be in the Soyuz in the event there's a risk ...
of needing to make an emergency de-orbit.
The trickiest part was the re-docking, where you go into a different port ...
and you've got a different point of view of the space station than you had before.
All of us double-checked, triple-checked everything ...
to make sure that when we got to the new docking port ...
that we were going to have the ability to get back inside.
That, to me, was the most tense part.
Things have been known to break on the outside of the space station.
You have to have a way to get outside and repair the item.
An airlock is required to be able to do that.
The station robotic arm is what I used ...
to lift the airlock out of the shuttle's payload bay.
The joint airlock is basically like a room that we can use to go outside.
It's like a porch on your space station.
And its whole function in life is to allow us to do space walks ...
from the space station while the shuttle is not there.
At the control station where you're operating the arm ...
there's no window where you can look and see the arm in motion.
There is no automatic collision control on that robotic arm ...
and all of your wits and talents are required ...
in order to keep from ramming it into the side of the space station.
Video cameras are our most trustworthy friends.
It's remarkable to me that we've been able to build these things ...
thousands of miles apart in different countries ...
using different systems ...
and put them together in space, and for them to work.
The robotic arm worked perfectly.
You could not have asked for a more perfect piece of hardware.
Inside, the crew moves the airlock's inner hatch into position.
Now you can take a walk outside the station whenever you need to.
But first, you have to get your body ready.
If you don't, you get crippling pains called the bends.
Now, I'm a diver.
And every diver knows you don't ever want to get the bends.
Astronaut Mike Gernhardt is also a diver.
Before going outside, he breathes pure oxygen while he's exercising.
That will get the pain-causing nitrogen bubbles ...
out of his blood much faster.
The front door to the station is now open.
Its construction is ongoing.
And soon, additions from Europe and Japan ...
will enhance this incredibly versatile and unique laboratory.
Here, we can expand our knowledge of things that affect our daily lives ...
and learn how natural events and people ...
are affecting our fragile environment.
That's worth all the risks ...
and something to celebrate.
Atlantis, Houston, somewhere in the world, it's still Janet's birthday.
- Pass me that orange. - Who wants some lemonade?
Come on, over here.
- Yury? - Okay.
- Yury got it that time. - Janet.
Steve.
Space is a very special place.
Without gravity, you can see and feel ...
and try things you can't do anywhere else.
In search of a better life on Earth, and away from Earth.
One day, you too, may visit the space station.
You might be an engineer inventing a whole new technology.
You could be a doctor or an ecologist studying the Earth.
Or you could be planning a trip to another planet.
This is your test bed.
Only tomorrow knows what you'll discover.