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Top Space Stories of 2000 Number 2 International Space Station Occupancy
posted: 30 June 2005
06:07 am
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla [inset]Haggle all you want about the starting point for the new millennium whether it was Jan. 1, 2000, or whether it will be Jan. 1, 2001. In the long run, historians will look back at Y2K as the year the human race set out to forever break its terrestrial bonds to finally lay claim to permanent residence in space.Commit this date Oct. 31, 2000 to memory. Half a world away on the arid steppes of central Asia,an American and two Russians blasted off that Halloween Tuesday from the same storied launch pad where Yuri Gagarin embarked on mankinds first piloted space flight in 1961. | 
Expedition One crew Sergei
Krikalev (left), Yuri Gidzenko
and Bill Shepherd
| After a two-day trip, the trio boarded the vacant International Space Station, opening up both the infant outpost and a new era of exploration one that could pave the way toward human expeditions to the moon, Mars and beyond.Still living and working on the station today, the vanguard crew is led by a feisty former U.S. Navy SEAL named Bill Shepherd. His first official act as outpost commander: Christening the outpost "Alpha" for the mythical Greek mountaintop mere mortals climbed to gain contact with the heavenly world above. | 
ISS seen from Endeavour as it
undocked on Dec 9, 2000
| Laboring side-by-side with Shepherd are two veteran Russian cosmonauts,Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The three men quickly settled in for the long haul in their orbital home-away-from home - a Russian crew module that doesnt exactly rank up there with the penthouse at the Ritz. Despite spartan accommodations, Shepherd and company are busy preparing the outpost for further construction and an estimated 45 rotating research crews that will serve aboard Alpha over the next 15 years. The stations first full-time tenants, meanwhile, will remain residents a little longer than expected. Their return to terra firma now is scheduled for March 12.-- Todd Halvorson, Cape Canaveral Bureau Chief
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