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
International Space Station Space Shuttle to dock to the space station. At that time, the Russian station "Mir" was still inhabited. The ISS remained unmanned for two years, while "Mir" was de-orbited. On 12 July 2000, "Zvezda" was launched into orbit. Preprogrammed commands on board deployed its solar arrays and communications antenna. It then became the passive target for a rendezvous with "Zarya" and "Unity": it maintained a station-keeping orbit while the "Zarya"-"Unity" vehicle performed the rendezvous and docking via ground control and the Russian automated rendezvous and docking system. "Zarya" computer transferred control of the station to "Zvezda" computer soon after docking.