15 Photos Celebrating 15 Years of Human Presence on Space Station

Fifteen years ago today on November 2 2000, the first Expedition crew arrived at the International Space Station.

Expedition 1 Commander Bill Shepard alongside cosmonaut flight engineers Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko lived aboard the station for 136 days. Fifteen years on and forty-five expeditions later the International Space Station has grown from the size of a school bus to the size of a football field.

The International Space Station program is a collaborative effort between 15 nations from all around the world. 15 certainly seems to be the magic number, so let's celebrate this milestone in human space exploration by showcasing fifteen photographs taken aboard the station to celebrate fifteen years of a continuous human presence in space.

Expedition 1 Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev poses for a photo inside the Zvezda Service Module, with space shuttle Atlantis approaching the complex from below. credit: NASA

STS-112 crew members Piers Sellers(bottom) and Fyodor Yurchikhin(top) in the Quest Airlock of the International Space Station prior to the mission's second spacewalk. credit: NASA

Expedition 17 flight engineer Greg Chamitoff floats through the Destiny Module of the International Space Station
credit: NASA

Expedition 30 crew members Dan Burbank(left) and Anton Shkaplerov(right) are pictured near a growing collection of insignias representing crews who have worked on the International Space Station. credit: NASA

Expedition 35 Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn casts an eye upon the Earth during an emergency EVA to replace a faulty ammonia pump on the exterior of the space station in 2013. credit: NASA

Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov waits in the Rassvet Module of the International Space Station to welcome three new crew members aboard the orbiting complex. credit: NASA

Expedition 28 crew member Ron Garan is photographed observing the Earth from the Cupola module of the ISS. The cupola is the astronaut's window on the world and provides a 360 degree panorama of the Earth below. credit: NASA

Expedition 15 crew members Clay Anderson(left) and Oleg Kotov(right) don their hard hats while working with the station's robotic arm, Canadarm2. credit: NASA

Expedition 24 Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson viewing the Earth from inside the Cupola. credit: NASA

Expedition 37 Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy waves for the camera during a spacewalk in 2013. credit: NASA

The Expedition 32 crew take a time out of their day to pose for an intelligent looking photo inside the Japanese Experiment Module credit: NASA

Expedition 24/25 crew member Doug Wheelock, donned in his Russian Sokol launch and entry suit smiles for the camera inside the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft. credit: NASA

Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka poses next to a Russian Orlan space suit in the station's Pirs Airlock. Padalka is a four-time commander of the space station and holds the record for the longest time in space by a human- accumulating 879 days in low-Earth orbit. credit: NASA

Expedition 40/41 crew members Alexander Gerst(left) and Reid Wiseman(right) conduct the SPHERES-RINGS experiment in the JEM. SPHERES-RINGS seeks to demonstrate wireless power transfer between satellites at a distance for enhanced operations. credit: NASA

The crew of Expedition 45 pose inside the Destiny Lab of the International Space Station. The crew consist of(Back Row L-R) Sergei Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Mikhail Kornienko & (Front Row L-R) Kimiya Yui(holding the Expedition 1 mission patch), Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren(holding the Expedition 45 patch). Both Kornienko and Kelly are currently over 200 days into a year long mission to the International Space Station, the first time a year-long mission has been conducted aboard the station. credit: NASA

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