2-860-614 - Heritage Space/Heritage Images

Artist's Conception of Space Station Freedom, 1991. Alan Chinchar's rendition of the Space Station Freedom in orbit. The painting depicts the completed space station. Earth is used as the image's backdrop with the Moon and Mars off in the distance. Freedom was to be a permanently crewed orbiting base to be completed in the mid 1990s. It was to have a crew of 4. Freedom was an attempt at international cooperation that attempted to incorporate the technological and economic assistance, of the United States, Canada, Japan, and nine European nations. The image shows four pressurized modules (three laboratories and a habitat module) and six large solar arrays which were expected to generate 56,000 watts of electricity for both scientific experiments and the daily operation of the station. Space Station Freedom never came to fruition. Instead, in 1993, the original partners, as well as Russia, pooled their resources to create the International Space Station.