Халықаралық ғарыш стансасындағы алғашқы ұзақ мерзімді экспедиция

First long duration human stay aboard the International Space Station

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 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 on 31 October 2000 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 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 uncrewed 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 and 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. The Expedition 1 crew consisted of an American commander and two Russians. The commander, Bill Shepherd, had been in space three times before, all on shuttle missions which lasted at most a week. The Russians, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev, both had previous long duration spaceflights on Mir, with Krikalev having spent over a full year in space. Questions had been raised by the Russian space agency about the choice of Shepherd as mission commander due to his lack of experience. He had felt excitement to have been one of the first people to enter the Zarya module (the first component of the space station) in 1998, during STS 88, and was looking forward to returning.

The first component of the space station was the Zarya module, which was launched uncrewed in November 1998. Following this launch, and prior to Expedition 1, there were five crewed Space Shuttle flights and two uncrewed Russian flights to the ISS. Some of these flights delivered large modules, such as the pressurized Unity and Zvezda modules, and the first piece of the Integrated Truss Structure. The crewed flights were used for partial assembly of the ISS, as well as to start unpacking the supplies and equipment that were being delivered. Prior to Expedition 1, Krikalev expected the ISS to be very similar to his experience on Mir ten years previous, due to the physical similarities of the stations' components. The launch of the Expedition 1 crew occurred a week before the United States presidential election, so it got little attention in the United States. At the time of the mission, the station was expected to be completed in 2006, and be continuously inhabited until at least 2015.

The crew of three were on board the International Space Station for four and a half months, from early November 2000 to mid March 2001. Major events during this time include the three week long Space Shuttle visits, which occurred in early December, mid February, and at the end of the expedition in March.

On 9 February 2001, Space Shuttle Atlantis docked to the ISS, bringing the five American crew members of STS 98 temporarily to the station. The mission was originally planned for mid January, but was delayed due to NASA's concerns about some cables on the shuttles. This mission brought the U. S. built Destiny laboratory, which has a mass of 16 short tons. It was installed with the use of the shuttle's robotic Canadarm, controlled by Marsha Ivins. Astronauts Thomas D. Jones and Robert L. Curbeam helped with the installation during a spacewalk. The Destiny module had a cost of US$1.4 billion, and would be used primarily for scientific research. During the spacewalk an ammonia coolant leak created a contamination scare, which happened when Curbeam was hooking up coolant lines to Destiny. The other two spacewalks went ahead without any problems. While the Shuttle was docked, the control of the station's orientation was switched from propellants to electrically powered gyroscopes, which had been installed in September 2000. The gyroscopes had not been used earlier due to the lack of key navigational electronics. By the end of STS 98, the crew of Expedition 1 had been on the station for over three months, and Shepherd stated that he was "ready to come home". NASA used several techniques to prevent the three crew members from suffering the effects of the "three month wall" psychological barrier, which had caused depression in previous astronauts. For example, they allowed more time for the crew to speak to their families via videophone, and they also encouraged them to watch movies and listen to music they like. It remained docked until Expedition 2, when it was intentionally burnt up during atmospheric reentry, like all Progress spacecraft.

Space Shuttle Discovery docked on 10 March 2001, bringing to the ISS the new long duration three person crew of Expedition 2, as well as four short term crew members of STS 102. A few hours after docking, the hatch opened, and all ten astronauts greeted each other, setting a new record for the number of people simultaneously in the ISS. The day after docking, American astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms began a spacewalk which ended up being nearly nine hours long, and still holds the record for the longest spacewalk ever performed, as of August 2010. The length of the spacewalk was partially due to some mistakes, including Voss accidentally releasing a small tool. Unable to retrieve it, NASA engineers tracked the tool, and decided to use Discoverys thrusters on 14 March to boost the station four kilometers higher, to ensure the ISS would not collide with the piece of space debris. The morning of the 14th the astronauts' wake up call was the song "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash, at the request of Shepherd's wife. Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL, said during the change over ceremony: "May the good will, spirit and sense of mission we had enjoyed on board endure. Sail her well." The commander of Discovery, Jim Wetherbee, said "For Captain Shepherd and his crew, we hold you in admiration as we prepare to bring you home. This has been an arduous duty for you. This ship was not built in a safe harbor. It was built on the high seas." Two days after the landing, coincidentally, Mir was intentionally burned up during atmospheric reentry, ending its 15 years in orbit.

In a typical day, each crew member divided his time between physical exercise, station assembly and maintenance, experiments, communications with ground personnel, personal time, and bio needs activities (such as rest and eating). The crew's daily schedule usually operated on UTC; for example, a typical morning had been scheduled to begin with an electronic wake up tone at about 05:00 UTC. But during the expedition, a more typical wake up time was actually between 06:00 and 07:00 UTC. Following the wake up call, the crew was given some time to clean up, have breakfast, and read e mail which had been uplinked to them from flight controllers. Most days ended with some entertainment, with the crew watching all or part of a movie; this was thought to be good for crew bonding as well as their psychological well being. An important part of the crew's schedule was regular exercise. They had three pieces of equipment for this: a stationary bicycle, a treadmill (TVIS), and a resistance device (IRED) for weight lifting. The bicycle malfunctioned in mid December 2000, and wasn't fixed until March. The treadmill, which used bungee cords to keep the crew member in place, was designed to reduce the vibrations caused by running. A normal treadmill would have produced enough vibrations to shake the station, and potentially affect the sensitive science experiments on board. The treadmill malfunctioned near the end of February, but some in flight maintenance fixed the problem within a week. The Russian technology didn't have the use of satellites, so they were restricted to ground passes (called a "comm pass") which lasted for only 10–20 minutes. With the arrival of the solar arrays on STS 97, they activated the S band Early Communication gear in the Unity Module, allowing for more continuous communication with Mission Control in Houston via NASA's network of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. During STS 106 in September 2000, the equipment for a ham radio was delivered to the station. The first 'ham' contact with the ground by the Expedition 1 crew was on 13 November 2000 on a pass over Moscow, shortly followed by contact with Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The crew reported that "Voice quality of ham radio continues to be well above any of our other links." Due to the speed of the space station, the window of radio contact only lasted for 5–10 minutes, which was usually enough for 10 to 20 questions.

Unlike subsequent expeditions, the crew of Expedition 1 had a somewhat modest amount of science experiments to conduct, due to the priority placed on station construction. Like previous missions, the astronauts took many photos of Earth from the station, over 700 in total, which have been made freely available. These Crew Earth Observations, are intended to record dynamic events on the Earth's surface such as storms, fires, or volcanoes. For example, a photo of 1 January 2001 shows Mount Cleveland, Alaska, with a plume of smoke, prior to its eruption the following month. On 23 January 2001, the crew observed a unique perspective of a plume of volcanic ash coming from Popocatépetl, an active volcano 70 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. An example of a low maintenance experiment was the protein crystal growth experiment, which had also been flown on previous shuttle missions. The goal was to produce better protein crystallizations than those produced on the Earth, and hence allowing for a more accurate model of protein structures. Of the 23 proteins and viruses attempted during Expedition 1, only four resulted in successful crystallizations, which was a lower success rate than predicted. Highlights of the footage include the first entry into the Destiny module, during STS 98; the Expedition 1 crew showering and shaving in zero gravity; and the docking of STS 102, followed by the change over to the Expedition 2 crew.