CANADA

Strength: Space robotics.

Gives: $1.2 billion for 55-foot-long mobile robot Canadarm and smaller Canada Hand, mobile cart that moves along tracks on ISS backbone, astronauts.

Gets: 2.3 percent of all research space, 2.3 percent of power and crew time.

An artist's illustration shows the Canadian mechanical arm aboard ISS, along with the Canada Hand at the end. Both are designed to help with space station assembly and maintenance. They would move equipment and supplies around the station, release and capture satellites, support astronauts working in space, and service instruments and other payloads attached to the space station.

AMERICA

Strength: 40 years of putting humans into space; lots of money.

Gives: $24.7 billion for Unity connector node, Spacehab cargo module, 300-foot truss (ISS backbone), lab module, joint airlock, propulsion module, cupola, solar arrays, X-38 crew return vehicle, habitation module, launches, astronauts.

Gets: 100 percent space on U.S. lab, centrifuge module, 10 U.S. attached payload sites; 50 percent European lab and attached payload sites; 49 percent Japanese lab, 50 percent attached payload site; 76.6 percent of power and research crew time on non-Russian modules.

In addition, NASA will charge businesses $15,000/hour for astronaut time, $10,000/pound for transport and $100/minute for data communications services. station.

RUSSIA

Strength: 40 years of putting humans into space, master of space stations.

Gives: Difficult to put a price tag on it, partly because much is U.S. funded, partly because of tough economic times in the country; Zarya control module; Zvezda service module (first living quarters); Soyuz return capsule; two docking compartments for Soyuz; universal docking module that includes living quarters, docking and stowage module; two research modules with solar arrays; launches and cosmonauts.

Gets: Keeps what it brings &emdash; two labs, plus use of power and crew that it provides and maintains. Benefits of any commercial projects it develops.

The ISS control module, also known by the technical term Functional Cargo Block, provides the station's initial propulsion and power. The first piece of the space station, it was launched on Nov. 20, 1998, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, with the name Zarya, meaning sunrise.