ISS Expedition 1: First Crew Arrives on November 2, 2000

The first long-term crew arrived at the International Space Station on November 2, 2000. Expedition 1, made up of NASA commander William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, docked two days after launching from Kazakhstan. Their arrival began a continuous human presence in orbit: according to NASA, the station has been occupied without interruption since November 2000.

Launch and Docking: October 31 to November 2, 2000

The crew launched on October 31, 2000, at 07:52 Universal Time aboard Soyuz TM-31, carried by a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After two days of chasing the station, the Soyuz docked at 09:21 UTC on November 2 at the aft port of the Zvezda service module.

For readers in the eastern United States, that docking came at 4:21 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Clocks had just fallen back from daylight saving time on October 29, so the usual four-hour gap to UTC had grown to five. The daylight saving time guide explains the switch, and the 2000 calendar shows the dates.

Who Was on the First Crew

The three crew members brought very different experience. William Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL, had flown three space shuttle missions, none longer than about a week, and some Russian officials questioned his selection as commander. He became only the second American astronaut to launch on a Russian spacecraft.

Yuri Gidzenko had spent 180 days aboard the Russian space station Mir on his only previous flight, and he piloted the Soyuz and handled the rendezvous with the station. Sergei Krikalev, on his fifth spaceflight, had already logged more than a year in space, mostly on Mir. In 1998 he had been among the first people to enter the Zarya and Unity modules during shuttle mission STS-88, so Expedition 1 made him the first person to visit the station twice.

The Station the Crew Found

The station Expedition 1 boarded was a small fraction of today’s complex. Assembly had begun two years earlier, when Russia’s Zarya module launched on a Proton rocket on November 20, 1998. The US-built Unity node followed on December 4, 1998, on a space shuttle. Zvezda, the Russian service module with living quarters and life support, launched on July 12, 2000, and made it possible for a crew of three to stay aboard permanently.

Shepherd wanted a simpler radio name than “International Space Station.” He asked to use the call sign “Alpha,” which he and Krikalev preferred, and it was approved for the whole expedition.

What Expedition 1 Did in Orbit

Life aboard was busy and improvised. The station did not yet have enough electricity to heat all three pressurized modules, so the Unity node went unused for the crew’s first weeks. Shepherd said the biggest challenge was trying “to pack 30 hours into an 18-hour work day,” and a task as simple as activating a galley food warmer, scheduled for 30 minutes, took a day and a half. Early on, Russian radio links allowed only 10- to 20-minute contacts with the ground at a time, until new equipment arrived with the US solar arrays. NASA notes that the crew also studied how space affects biology and physics and observed Earth from orbit.

Several visiting vehicles arrived during their stay:

• November 18, 2000: The Progress M1-4 cargo ship docked after its automatic system failed and the crew guided it in manually. It re-docked on December 26.
• December 2, 2000: Space shuttle Endeavour (STS-97) docked and installed the first pair of US solar arrays, increasing the station’s power fivefold.
• February 9, 2001: Atlantis (STS-98) docked and delivered Destiny, the US laboratory module, which cost $1.4 billion. With Destiny attached, the station outweighed Russia’s Mir for the first time.
• February 28, 2001: Progress M-44 brought more supplies.

Coming Home on Discovery

Space shuttle Discovery, flying mission STS-102, carried the first crew home in March 2001. Before leaving, Shepherd handed command to cosmonaut Yury Usachev of Expedition 2, whose crew also included NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms. Shepherd’s farewell ended with a sailor’s line: “Sail her well.” Discovery landed at night on March 21, 2001. Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev had spent 136 days, 14 hours and 7 minutes aboard the station, and about 141 days had passed since their launch. The days between dates calculator confirms the span from October 31, 2000, to March 21, 2001.

Expedition 1 milestone	Date
Launch on Soyuz TM-31	October 31, 2000
Docking with the station	November 2, 2000
Endeavour delivers solar arrays	December 2, 2000
Atlantis delivers Destiny lab	February 9, 2001
Landing on Discovery	March 21, 2001

Why November 2, 2000, Still Matters

Every person in space aboard the station since then has been part of an unbroken chain of crews that began with Expedition 1. NASA describes the station as continuously occupied since November 2000, and that streak has now run for more than two decades.

The outpost itself grew enormously. NASA lists its mass at 925,335 pounds and its end-to-end length at 356 feet, and it circles Earth about 16 times a day at roughly five miles per second. Five space agencies representing 15 countries operate it. For anyone born after November 2, 2000, there has never been a day without humans living in orbit.