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
Plants in space plants in space, were the trees on the brick moon space station, in the 1869 short story "The Brick Moon". In the 2010s there was an increased desire for long-term space missions, which lead to desire for space-based plant production as food for astronauts. An example of this is vegetable production on the International Space Station in Earth orbit. By the year 2010, 20 plant growth experiments had been conducted aboard the international Space Station.. Several experiments have been focused on how plant growth and distribution compares in micro-gravity, space conditions versus Earth conditions. This enables scientists to explore whether