NASA celebrates 20 years of continuous human presence at IS

NASA celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first long-term mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday.

On November 2, 2000, the Expedition 1 crew arrived at the space station with a mission to create an orbiting science laboratory.

The three space travelers, William Shepherd of NASA and Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, docked at the ISS after two days aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.

Since then, humans have lived and worked at the station for 20 years in a row. It now houses Expedition 64.
“Our orbiting laboratory has been continuously inhabited since then: more than 240 humans from 19 countries have visited, conducting more than 3,000 ISS research investigations,” NASA tweeted.

According to NASA, experiments have been conducted in all fields of science in the unique microgravity environment of the ISS, improving our understanding of disease, natural disasters, and physics.

Researchers have tested technologies and honed the skills necessary for further space exploration and to establish a human presence on the Moon and Mars.

An international crew of six occupies the ISS, which has a wingspan of 109 meters and hums about 400 kilometers above our planet at 28,000 kilometers per hour.

The project is a pact between the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and the 11 member states of the European Space Agency.

“We have set the tone for international cooperation,” Joel Montalbano, ISS program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told the Houston We Have a Podcast.

“When we had problems, we met around the world to solve it,” Montalbano said.