On 31 October 2000, the first “long-duration crew” at the International Space Station (ISS) launched from Russia (Kazakhstan). Construction had begun in 1998.
That initial crew consisted of two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, and one US astronaut, William Shepherd. Shepherd was the commander of ISS Expedition One. Gidzenko was as the commander of the Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft.
The three men arrived at the ISS on 02 November 2000, “marking the start of an uninterrupted human presence on the orbiting laboratory.”
In 22 years, ISS has grown. It began as a pair of U.S. and Russian modules. Today, it is much, much bigger!
Measured from the edges of its solar arrays, the station covers the area of a football field including the end zones. It includes laboratory modules from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe.

The international effort made history on 25 October 2007:
#OTD 15 years ago, history was made in the form of a handshake🤝
On Oct. 25, 2007, two women commanders, Peggy Whitson and Pamela Melroy, shook hands in space. Since then, women’s representation on space crews have increased significantly. https://t.co/UEQ9mKad5S
— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) October 25, 2022
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