The trajectory of space travel has known its fair share of competition. From the early Space Race to modern Tech Billionaires, folks have been racing up. But space is for everyone and as Spacelab payload specialist, Ulf Merbold, stated: “Science in itself is international.”

Spacelab was a first of a kind, an international effort to bring experiments to space with a reusable lab.

Via NASA:

Forty years ago, in 1983, the Space Shuttle Columbia flew its first international spaceflight, STS-9. The mission included—for the first time—the European Space Agency’s Spacelab pressurized module and featured more than 70 experiments from American, Canadian, European, and Japanese scientists. Europeans were particularly proud of this “remarkable step” because “NASA, the most famous space agency on the globe,” included the laboratory on an early Shuttle mission. NASA was equally thrilled with the Spacelab and called the effort “history’s largest and most comprehensive multinational space project.” The Spacelab became a unifying force for all the participating nations, scientists, and astronauts.

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