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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – The International Space Station was a cramped, damp, and puny three-room apartment when the first crew moved in. Twenty years and 241 visitors later, the resort has an observation tower, three toilets, six sleeping compartments and 12 bedrooms, depending on how you count.
Monday marks two decades of a constant flow of people living there.
Astronauts from 19 countries floated through the hatches of the space station, including many regular visitors who arrived on shuttles for short-term construction work, and several tourists who paid their own way.
The first crew – American Bill Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko – took off from Kazakhstan on October 31, 2000. Two days later, they opened the doors to the space station, shaking hands in the unit.
Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL who served as the station’s commander, compared it to living on a ship at sea. The three spent most of their time convincing the equipment to work; the balky systems made the place too hot. The conditions were primitive compared to now.
Installations and repairs took hours at the new space station, compared to minutes on the ground, Krikalev recalled.
“Every day seemed to have its own set of challenges,” Shepherd said during a recent NASA panel discussion with his teammates.
The space station has since grown into a complex almost as long as a football field, with eight miles of electrical wiring, an acre of solar panels and three high-tech labs.
“That’s 500 tons of stuff spinning in space, most of which never touched until it got up there and bolted,” Shepherd told The Associated Press. “And it all lasts 20 years with almost no big problems.”
“It’s a real testament to what can be done in these types of programs,” he said.
Shepherd, 71, is long retired from NASA and lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Krikalev, 62, and Gidzenko, 58, have risen through the Russian space ranks. Both participated in the mid-October launch of the 64th crew.
The first thing the three did when they arrived at the darkened space station on November 2, 2000, was to turn on the lights, which Krikalev called “very memorable.” Then they heated water for hot drinks and activated the isolated toilet.
“Now we can live,” Gidzenko recalls, telling Shepherd. “We have lights, hot water and toilets.”
The crew called their new home Alpha, but the name didn’t stick.
Although pioneers in this field, the three men have had no close calls for nearly five months there, Shepherd said, and so far the station has held up relatively well.
The main concern of NASA these days is the growing threat of space debris. This year, the orbiting laboratory had to avoid debris three times.
As for the station’s equipment, astronauts now have near-continuous communication with flight controllers and even an Internet phone for personal use. The first crew had sporadic radio contact with the ground; communication failures could last for hours.
While the three astronauts got along well, tensions sometimes rose between them and the two control missions, in Houston and outside Moscow. Shepherd was so frustrated with the “conflicting marching orders” that he insisted they come up with a single plan.
“I have to say it was my happiest day in space,” he said during the roundtable.
With its first coin launched in 1998, the International Space Station has already recorded 22 years in orbit. NASA and its partners say it easily has several years of utility left at 400 kilometers.
The Mir station – home to Krikalev and Gidzenko in the late 1980s and 1990s – operated for 15 years before being guided to a fiery reentry over the Pacific in 2001. more recent orbital outposts.
Astronauts spend most of their six-month stays these days operating the space station and performing science experiments. A few even spent nearly a year up there on a single flight, serving as medical guinea pigs. Shepherd and his crew, on the other hand, barely had time to do a handful of experiments.
The first two weeks were so hectic – “just work and work and work,” according to Gidzenko – that they didn’t shave for days. It took a while to find the razors.
Even back then, the crew’s favorite pastime was watching Earth. It takes just 90 minutes for the station to travel around the world, allowing astronauts to soak up 16 stunning sunrises and 16 sunsets each day.
The current residents – an American and two Russians, along with the original crew – plan to celebrate Monday’s milestone by sharing a special dinner, taking in the views of Earth, and remembering all of the crews that take them. have preceded, especially the first.
But it will not be a day off: “We will probably celebrate this day with hard work,” Sergei Kud-Sverchkov said on Friday from orbit.
One of the best results of 20 years of continuous space living, according to Shepherd, is the diversity of astronauts.
While the men are still leading the pack, more crews include women. Two American women served as the skipper of the space station. Commanders are usually American or Russian, but also came from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan. While African Americans have made short visits to the space station, the first black resident is expected to arrive in mid-November on SpaceX’s second astronaut flight.
Massive businesses like human travel to Mars can benefit from the last two decades of international experience and cooperation, Shepherd said.
“If you look at the space station program today, that’s a blueprint of how to do it. All these questions about how it should be organized and what it will look like, the big questions are already behind us, ”he told the AP.
Russia, for example, had station crews come and go after the NASA disaster at Columbia in 2003 and after the shuttles were withdrawn in 2011.
When Shepherd and his teammates returned to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Discovery after nearly five months, his primary goal had been achieved.
“Our team has shown that we can work together,” he said.
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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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