Happy 10th Anniversary, ISS!

November 2, 2010 — Nearly 10 years ago, Expedition 1 Commander Bill Shepherd and flight engineers Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko didn’t just visit space. They stayed there, becoming the first residents of the International Space Station. Since November 2, 2000, 200 explorers have called the station home. In addition, 15 nations have contributed modules and hardware to the orbiting complex and more than 600 experiments have been conducted onboard. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of human life, work and research on the space station, NASA had a series of roundtable discussions last week featuring former space station residents, key leaders, and team members who’ve guided the station through its first decade. Panelists at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA Headquarters in Washington discussed the challenges and accomplishments of the station's first decade of assembly and research and consider the promise of the upcoming decade of microgravity research. Here is an excerpt from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s statement marking the anniversary. “Today, we celebrate ten years of humans living and working continuously aboard the International Space Station. This global milestone is tremendously significant, both for NASA and our partners. It recognizes the success of an amazing feat of engineering and a magnificent leap forward in the story of human achievement. I congratulate the entire station team and the thousands of people worldwide who have helped us reach this anniversary. “Since Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev first boarded the station as the Expedition 1 crew, more than 196 people have visited the complex, and by the exact time of the anniversary this morning, the station will have completed 57,361 orbits of the Earth, traveling some 1.5 billion miles. “More than 600 different research and technology development experiments have been conducted on the station, many of which are producing advances in medicine, recycling systems and a fundamental understanding of the universe. On October 25, the station set a record for being the longest continuously inhabited spacecraft. On that day, the space station eclipsed the previous record of 3,644 days set by the Russian Mir Space Station. The station is our toehold in space, and it will be an essential part of our work to send humans on missions beyond low Earth orbit in the future.”		Backdropped by a blue and white Earth, the International Space Station is seen in this 2009 photo taken from Space Shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft separate.

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