The moon or bust

Space: NASA works to finish the ISS so it can go to the moon instead | Daniel James Devine

Lockheed Martin Corp./NASA

Touching down safely at the Kennedy Space Center in February, NASA's space shuttle Atlantis completed the 24th shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the world's largest orbiting laboratory. During the two-week mission astronauts conducted three spacewalks, replacing a used nitrogen tank and attaching to the station a cylinder-shaped module called Columbus, a $2 billion roomful of space experiments built and paid for by the European Space Agency.

Even as Atlantis undocked with the ISS after the Columbus installation, space shuttle Endeavour back on Earth was slowly rolling toward its launch site for an expected March 11 liftoff, when it will deliver yet another ISS segment, this time a Japanese lab called Kibo. As the in-space construction of the ISS approaches its 10th year, 50-year-old NASA is sprinting to finish the final third of the station before a 2010 deadline.