25 years of life in orbit

Humans have now continuously occupied the International Space Station for a quarter century. Ben Evans celebrates the milestone and asks what's next

- Ben Evans

On 2 November 2000, a US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts became the first full-time crew of the International Space Station (ISS). Expedition 1's Bill Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko spent four months bringing the station to life - and a new era dawned.

Thus began a 25-year human presence in space. Fast forward to today and the ISS has hosted 290 people from 27 nations. Building, maintaining and operating this Earth-circling marvel - the brightest artificial object in the sky, larger than a football field - is our grandest engineering success and a testament to international partnerships at their best. Put in context, around a quarter of Earth's population alive today has never known a moment when humans were not in space.

When Shepherd's crew arrived, the ISS was the size of a small apartment. Station life proved tough, expeditionary and pioneering, with few creature comforts. In March 2001, Shuttle Discovery brought them home after delivering the Expedition 2 crew. Following nautical convention, Shepherd rang a ship's brass bell to signify the change of command - an ISS tradition that continues to this day.

The station expanded rapidly. Astronauts and cosmonauts performed 275 spacewalks to assemble, upgrade and repair the ISS, tending to occasional power failures, coolant leaks and computer glitches. But the dangers were acute: in 2013, water entered astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet during a spacewalk. He only narrowly survived.

Breaking barriers