There are no technical constraints to extending...

The heads of space agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States involved in the ISS project met in Tokyo to review the prospects for cooperation over the next decade.

"The heads of the agencies expressed their strong mutual interest in continuing operations and utilization for as long as there are demonstrable benefits to using the ISS," the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said on its website.

Roscosmos said the participants in the project "emphasized their common intent to undertake the necessary procedures within their respective governments to reach consensus later this year on the continuation of the ISS until the next decade."

The orbital assembly of the ISS began with the launch of the U.S.-funded and Russian-built Zarya module from Kazakhstan on November 20, 1998. Zarya, which means "dawn" in Russian, was the ISS"s first component.

The project has taken longer than the planned five years, and as of November 2009 the station

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