Aside from the ISS, three nations (U.S., Russia and China) have independently launched and operated space stations. Soviet Space Program Salyut 1, 3-7: Beginning with Salyut 1 in 1971, the Soviet Space Program launched and operated six more stations, culminating in Salyut 7, which operated for nearly 9 years.

How many countries have their own space station?

The ISS includes contributions from 15 nations. NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia) and the European Space Agency are the major partners of the space station who contribute most of the funding; the other partners are the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

How many space stations are there in the world?

As of 2021, there is one fully operational and permanently inhabited space station in low Earth orbit: the International Space Station (ISS), which is used to study the effects of spaceflight on the human body as well as to provide a location to conduct a greater number and longer length of scientific studies than is ...