Baikonur Cosmodrome · 07:52 UTC
31·10·2000
Soyuz TM-31 lifts off from Gagarin's Start carrying the crew of Expedition 1 to the International Space Station. Two days later they float aboard, and humanity has not left low Earth orbit since.
People have lived continuously in space for
–days
–hours
–minutes
–seconds
Counted from the crew's arrival on 2 November 2000.
The crew
William ShepherdNASA · Expedition commander
Yuri GidzenkoRoscosmos · Soyuz commander
Sergei KrikalevRoscosmos · Flight engineer
What happened next
- — Soyuz TM-31 launches from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
- — The Soyuz docks with the Zvezda module and the crew moves in. Shepherd asks to call the station "Alpha".
- — After about 141 days, the crew lands aboard Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-102), handing over to Expedition 2.
- — Someone is still up there. The handover has never been broken.