15th anniversary of the first expedition to the ISS-1. They remember the astronauts – Express-News

02.11 | 23:23

Today, November 2 was exactly fifteen years since the arrival of the first international crew on the ISS-1. The crew of the pioneers entered the Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko and American William Sheppard.

«We docked, opened their hatch, opened the station door and entered,” – so casually recalls Sergei Krikalev to start work on the orbital station .

The first thing the crew turned on the water recovery system, heating system and reopen the toilet. However, not everything went smoothly. There were difficulties in connecting the Russian and American equipment in the station. The problem was that different segments was different voltages, and how it will work – it was not clear. In general, the pioneers are more than enough problems. Lack of equipment on board the station, the lack of practical experience with the new station …, all this fell on the members of the first expedition to the ISS-1.

And that cost the crew first docking with the cargo ship “Progress” when ” truck “suddenly became rock. The crew had to switch to manual control, but there has not been no surprises – for unknown reasons, suddenly fogged part of the camera lens on the ship, the visibility was almost zero.

«We had to work together, one watching the ship, and the other managed approach. Through a mist still managed to dock the ship, “- says Krikalev. But the adventure is not over: the key to open the hatch of “progress” was made in error, as a result it does not install cleanly.

According to Krikalev, the largest volume of experiments was carried out exactly at the time of the first manned mission to the ISS.

Over the past fifteen years the International Space Station has changed dramatically: changed and has acquired new modules. The amount of living space increased to 1,000 square meters, the number of units reached fourteen, and its total weight is already about 411 tons. It is the largest construction, collected person to orbit the Earth.

A total of 223 people visited the ISS from 15 countries. From it made 189 outputs a man into space.