Nov 03 2010
Humanity Marks Ten Continuous Years In Space
You can click the image above to see a series of excellent images of the International Space Station (ISS) from orbit. Our little stepping stone into the final frontier today is celebrating 10 years of continuous human occupation.
Today 10 years ago Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko & Sergei Krikalev, as Expedition 1, entered the ISS from Soyuz TM-31, initiating a decade of continuous occupancy of the outpost by humans. More than 196 people have since visited the complex, and by the exact time of the anniversary (5:21 a.m. this morning), the station has completed 57,361 “inhabitated” orbits of the Earth, having travelled some 1.5 billion miles. Representatives of the five international agencies that built and operate the station have agreed in principle to continuing its use for another decade. 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. Happy Birthday, ISS!
A real cool flash movie at USA Today shows the 12 years of construction required to build this human outpost in orbit. Happy Birthday ISS!
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Free To Prosper, AJ Strata. AJ Strata said: new: Humanity Marks Ten Continuous Years In Space http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/15257 […]
I still think NASA should have kept up the ship’s log that Shepard started.
One area that I agree with the Russians on…you have got to think of a space station as a ship. It affects the approach to maintenance and design a great deal.