The International Space Station began with the launch of Zarya in November 1998 and the arrival of Unity aboard STS-88 two weeks later. Russian launch vehicles and 37 Space Shuttle station missions built and supplied the early outpost, while later partner laboratories, logistics modules, robotics, truss structures, solar arrays, airlocks, and research systems turned it into the largest cooperative spacecraft ever assembled.

Expedition 1 arrived aboard Soyuz TM-31 in November 2000 and began the station’s continuous occupation. An expedition is a resident-crew increment rather than a single spacecraft flight: members often arrive on different Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles, overlap during handovers, and may belong to two consecutive expedition crews. Separate Progress, Dragon, Cygnus, HTV, ATV, and Shuttle flights have supplied the station, carried experiments, raised its orbit, and removed waste.

The archive therefore preserves several connected histories without collapsing them into one count. Expedition records describe the changing resident crew and station work; visiting-flight records describe actual launches and spacecraft; Shuttle missions remain part of the Shuttle archive but are cross-listed here; and vehicle pages document both each flown article and NASA’s 43 principal station assembly elements. Active status is current through July 15, 2026, one day after Soyuz MS-29 arrived.