International Space Station Russian space station called OPSEK. The ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian "Salyut", "Almaz", and "Mir" stations as well as "Skylab" from the US. The station has been continuously occupied for since the arrival of Expedition 1 on 2 November 2000. This is the longest continuous human presence in low Earth orbit, having surpassed the previous record of held by "Mir". It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from 17 different nations. After the American Space Shuttle programme ended in 2011, Soyuz rockets became the only
Chinese large modular space station Chinese large modular space station The Chinese large modular space station is a planned space station to be placed in Low Earth orbit. The planned Chinese Space Station will be roughly one-fifth the mass of the International Space Station and about the size of the decommissioned Russian Mir space station. The Chinese station is expected to have a mass between 80 to 100 metric tons. Operations will be controlled from the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center in China. The planned launch date of the core module, the "Tianhe-1" (“Harmony of the Heavens”), is 2020. In 2017, the Chinese launched