The ISS during Expedition 1, seen during the approach of STS-97, the first Shuttle mission to visit the inhabited space station
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Mission type | ISS Expedition |
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Mission duration | 136 days 17 hours 9 minutes (docking to hatch closing) 140 days 23 hours 38 minutes (launch to landing) |
Expedition | |
Space Station | International Space Station |
Began | 2 November 2000, 09:21:03 | UTC
Ended | 18 March 2001, 04:32:00 | UTC
Arrived aboard | Soyuz TM-31 |
Departed aboard |
STS-102 Space Shuttle Discovery |
Crew | |
Crew size | 3 |
Members |
William Shepherd Yuri Gidzenko Sergei K. Krikalev |
L-R: Sergei K. Krikalev (Russia), William M. (Bill) Shepherd (United States), and Yuri Pavlovich Gidzenko (Russia) |
Expedition 1 was the first long-duration stay on the International Space Station (ISS). The three-person crew stayed aboard the station for 136 days, from November 2000 to March 2001. It was the beginning of an uninterrupted human presence on the station which continues as of March 2017. Expedition 2, which also had three crew members, immediately followed Expedition 1.
The official start of the expedition occurred when the crew docked to the station on 2 November 2000, aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-31, which had launched two days earlier. During their mission, the Expedition 1 crew activated various systems on board the station, unpacked equipment that had been delivered, and hosted three visiting Space Shuttle crews and two unmanned Russian Progress resupply vehicles. The crew was very busy throughout the mission, which was declared a success.
The three visiting Space Shuttles brought equipment, supplies, and key components of the space station. The first of these, STS-97, docked in early December 2000, and brought the first pair of large U.S. photovoltaic arrays, which increased the station's power capabilities fivefold. The second visiting shuttle mission was STS-98, which was docked in mid-February 2001, delivered the US$1.4 billion research module Destiny, which increased the mass of the station beyond that of Mir for the first time. Mid-March 2001 saw the final shuttle visit of the expedition, STS-102, whose main purpose was to exchange the Expedition 1 crew with the next three-person long-duration crew, Expedition 2. The expedition ended when Discovery undocked from the station on 18 March 2001.