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
Bigelow Commercial Space Station with the first module to be launched no earlier than 2016. The CSS Skywalker (Commercial Space Station Skywalker) was a 2005 concept for the first "space hotel" by Bigelow Aerospace. The Skywalker was designed to be composed of multiple Nautilus (B330) habitat modules, which would be inflated and connected upon reaching orbit. An MDPM (Multi-Directional Propulsion Module) would allow the Skywalker to be moved into interplanetary or lunar trajectories. In short, CSS Skywalker was "an effort to build the planet's first orbiting space hotel, [with a projected] room rate of USD$1 million per night", and a hoped-for launch date for