Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, episode 72,

The International Space Station begins, part one.

I'm Gary Jordan and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast we bring in the experts, scientists,

engineers, and astronauts all to let you know the coolest information about what's going

on here at NASA. So 20 years ago on November 20th, 1998 the first element of

the International Space Station called Zaria was launched

to space.

It was the first step towards two decades of international cooperation, scientific research, and

discovery.

We're sort of used to talking about the International Space Station

now. Crews come and go and long-duration journeys and during each journey the astronauts

are conducting hundreds of experiments doing spacewalks and making it all look relatively routine.

But of course to get to this point you had to start somewhere.

And that was with Zaria, the first element of the space station, designed, constructed, and

flown as a joint effort between Russia and NASA.

It was a critical step and a critical module to provide power, propulsion, guidance, and all the

essentials that would enable the first modules to be attached and to function properly.

So with me to tell this story of the first element is Doug Drewry.

He is the former FGB program manager and launch package Manager for the Mission.

You hear us say FGB a lot.

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