On 31 October 2000, from the same launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome that had sent Yuri Gagarin into history nearly four decades earlier, a Soyuz rocket lifted Commander William Shepherd, Soyuz Commander Yuri Gidzenko, and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev toward the still-unfurnished International Space Station. Two days later, on 2 November 2000, the crew docked to the Zvezda Service Module and stepped inside, inaugurating an uninterrupted human presence in low Earth orbit that continues to this day. Their four-month mission was a pioneering shakedown: activating life support systems, installing cables and laptop computers, and conducting approximately 50 science and technology investigations to document the station’s vibrational environment and their own physiological adaptation to weightlessness. Shepherd, the first American to command a long-duration station mission, had previously led the redesign of the station program. Gidzenko brought experience from commanding the Mir space station. Krikalev, the world’s most experienced space traveler at the time, became the first person to visit the ISS twice, having helped mate Zarya and Unity during STS-88. By the time their relief arrived in March 2001, Expedition 1 had transformed a cluster of modules into a functioning home, proving that international crews could live, work, and survive together in the endless night.