When I turn to look outside a few seconds later, the orange blaze has disappeared. The space station is right there, outside, mighty and resplendent, lit up with orange light, warm and alive, in which its huge solar panels seem to burn, incandescent. The radio transmitter is on, and on Earth they cannot know that everything is fine, that there isn’t any problem-other than an overabundance of happiness. “ Oh my god! ” I exclaim, and Anton immediately orders me to be quiet. Maybe it’s simply that I wasn’t prepared for such sudden beauty. Maybe my tiredness is finally getting the better of me. Maybe my pent-up emotions are bubbling over. I turn my head slowly and feel a jolt of astonishment and joy. Nothing new there: I’ve seen it before, but something draws my attention to the edge of my peripheral vision. When I turn towards my window, the first thing I see is one of the small solar panels on our Soyuz. I’ve loosened the straps as much as I can and I’m floating over my seat. Some of the veteran astronauts have told me to look for it in the last 40 meters. I’ll never be able to see the whole thing, but I’m waiting for part of it to appear in my window. I want to see it with my own eyes, in color. Not the indirect, black-and-white image from the cameras. The moment isn’t chosen randomly: I’m looking for the space station. We’re perfectly aligned with the docking port, slowly but surely approaching the ISS, when I allow myself a quick look outside. By the time it was finished five years later, it would stretch to the size of a football field and have a mass of 500 tons. The International Space Station, still under construction in July 2006. It’s impossible and incorrect to forget that.” Says Borisenko: “The ISS is the most expensive object in the history of humanity, and we understand our responsibility to humanity. Gennady Padalka, who also spent half a year on Russia’s Mir space station in 19, is the most experienced space traveler of all time, with four ISS tours and 878 days spent in orbit.Īll are aware that their unique occupation is also a privilege. Jeff Williams has lived on the station three times-an American record he shares with Peggy Whitson. So has Russian cosmonaut Andrei Borisenko, who’s going up again next April, on Expedition 65. Fellow Italian Paolo Nespoli has served two tours on the space station. Samantha Cristoforetti’s 200-day mission in 20 was the longest by a European woman. But we asked some of the people who’ve spent the most time there: What’s it like?Ĭhristina Koch returned last February from a nearly year-long stay in orbit, and holds the record for longest spaceflight by a woman.

No one person, no one crew, could convey the space station story in its entirety. To date, 240 people from 19 countries have visited the International Space Station, almost half of them for long-term stays in an outpost with the volume of a six-bedroom house.

Nobody else, anywhere, does what they do. Their work is demanding and dangerous, and more specialized, perhaps, than any work has ever been. For the past 20 years, without interruption, a small huddle of people-typically six at a time-have been living and working 250 miles over our heads, circling endlessly through the vacuum of space at five miles per second.

Interior international space station