It was conceived in September 1993 by the United States and Russia after 1980s plans for separate American (Freedom) and Soviet (Mir-2) space stations failed due to budgetary reasons.

[6] The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), or Kibō, was announced in 1985, as part of the Freedom space station in response to a NASA request in 1982.

The plan spearheaded by Germany and Italy included a module which would be attached to Freedom, and with the capability to evolve into a full-fledged European orbital outpost before the end of the century.

Congress was unwilling to provide enough money to build and operate Freedom, and demanded NASA increase international participation to defray the rising costs or they would cancel the entire project outright.

A third layer consists of bartered contractual agreements or the trading of the partners' rights and duties, including the 2005 commercial framework agreement between NASA and Roscosmos that sets forth the terms and conditions under which NASA purchases seats on Soyuz crew transporters and cargo capacity on uncrewed Progress transporters.

[33] At the same time, the Immortality Drive, an electronic record of eight digitised human DNA sequences, was placed aboard the ISS.

Flights to the ISS include 37 Space Shuttle, 90 Progress,[c] 71 Soyuz, 5 ATV, 9 HTV, 2 Boeing Starliner, 45 SpaceX Dragon[d] and 20 Cygnus missions.

The other spacecraft — the Japanese HTV, the SpaceX Dragon (under CRS phase 1) and the Northrop Grumman[45] Cygnus — rendezvous with the station before being grappled using Canadarm2 and berthed at the nadir port of the Harmony or Unity module for one to two months.

As of February 2025 The components of the ISS are operated and monitored by their respective space agencies at mission control centres across the globe.

Rather, Article 5 of the IGA sets forth that each partner shall retain jurisdiction and control over the elements it registers and over personnel in or on the Space Station who are its nationals.

[54] Despite this view, however, in an internal e-mail leaked to the press on August 18, 2008 from Griffin to NASA managers,[55][56][57] Griffin apparently communicated his belief that the current US administration had made no viable plan for US crews to participate in the ISS beyond 2011, and that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) were actually seeking its demise.

[56] The e-mail appeared to suggest that Griffin believed the only reasonable solution was to extend the operation of the Space Shuttle beyond 2010, but noted that Executive Policy (i.e. the White House) was firm that there would be no extension of the Space Shuttle retirement date, and thus no US capability to launch crews into orbit until the Orion spacecraft would become operational in 2020 as part of the Constellation programme.

He did not see purchase of Russian launches for NASA crews as politically viable following the 2008 South Ossetia war, and hoped the incoming Barack Obama administration would resolve the issue in 2009 by extending Space Shuttle operations beyond 2010.

[61][62][63][64] The Act allows for an additional Space Shuttle flight, STS-134, to the ISS to install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which was previously cancelled.

[65] Obama's plan for space exploration includes finishing the station and completion of the US programmes related to the Orion spacecraft.

[66] On 12 April 2021, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, then-Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov announced he had decided that Russia might withdraw from the ISS programme in 2025.

Part of Boeing's services under the contract related to extending the station's primary structural hardware past 2020 to the end of 2028.

[78][79] In September 2018, the Leading Human Spaceflight Act was introduced with the intent to extend operations of the ISS to 2030, and was confirmed in December 2018.

[80][81][82] Congress later passed similar provisions in its CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden on 9 August 2022.

Due to national security concerns, the United States Congress passed a law prohibiting contact between US and Chinese space programmes.

[87] In addition to national security concerns, United States objections include China's human rights record and issues surrounding technology transfer.

[88][89] The heads of both the South Korean and Indian space agencies announced at the first plenary session of the 2009 International Astronautical Congress on 12 October that their nations intend to join the ISS programme.

For example, in the first half of 2007, ISS research dealt primarily with human biological responses to being in space, covering topics like kidney stones, circadian rhythm, and the effects of cosmic rays on the nervous system.

Jerome Schnee estimated that the indirect economic return from spin-offs of human space exploration has been many times the initial public investment.

[106] A review of the claims by the Federation of American Scientists argued that NASA's rate of return from spin-offs is actually "astoundingly bad", except for aeronautics work that has led to aircraft sales.