Cold War ENEMIES Joined Forces to Build the Space Station

Two nations that spent decades aiming nuclear weapons at each other quietly built a home in space together.

The International Space Station was assembled by 15 nations, led by the United States and Russia, bitter rivals from the Cold War.

Just years after the Space Race, when the two superpowers competed to dominate the heavens, they started bolting their spacecraft together instead. American and Russian modules, European labs, Japanese and Canadian hardware, all joined into one orbiting outpost. Astronauts and cosmonauts who might once have been enemies now live side by side, depend on each other to survive, and share the same air, food, and water.

For 25 years, the most international thing humans have ever built has orbited above every border on Earth, a fragile experiment in cooperation, 250 miles over a planet that still struggles to get along.

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