This week marks the 20th anniversary of the construction of the International Space Station.
As of November 20, 2018 the ISS has been orbiting earth for 20 years.
The Standard has put together a gallery of incredible images showing how it has evolved over time, from the launch of the Zarya module in 1998 to the space station we know today.
Some 15 counties including the US, UK, Canada, Russia and Germany contributed to the construction of the station.
Gary Oleson, space station engineer at NASA from 1988 to 1993, told Space.com that the ISS pushed NASA into "an entirely new way of thinking".
He said: "We normally think of a spacecraft as being a spacecraft. But it turned out that the International Space Station, during the assembly, was not, from an engineering point of view, one spacecraft.
"It was at one time 19 different spacecraft, because every time you went up and added a new element, you had a different spacecraft. It had a different mass; it had a different reliability."
The ISS is a satellite that flies around the world every 90 minutes, travelling at five miles per second.
Astronauts have been living on board the station ever since its first stages. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000.
Around 230 astronauts from 18 countries have visited the ISS with over 200 spacewalks carried out since December 1998.
Images from our gallery show numerous astronauts including Tim Peake embarking on missions to the station.
Astronauts continue to take part in experiments and research in human physiology and astronomy.
Another photograph shows Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, who went viral in 2015 after he released a video of himself playing Space Oddity on the guitar onboard the space station.
According to NASA scientists, the station could be discontinued after 2024.
