MOSCOW, November 2. /TASS/. About 290 people from 26 countries have visited the International Space Station (ISS) during its operation, Roscosmos said on the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the first long-term expedition to the station, after which the orbital laboratory became permanently inhabited.

"Representatives of 26 countries have worked on the ISS. <...> Of the 290 individuals, 239 were men and 51 were women," the state corporation said in a statement. A total of 125 manned flights have been carried out under the station's program, including 71 Soyuz spacecraft flights, 37 Space Shuttle flights, 16 Crew Dragon missions, and one Boeing Starliner flight.

November 20, 1998 is considered the starting point for the ISS, when its first module, Zarya, was launched into space. For nearly two years, the station was equipped with the Unity and Zvezda modules. Continuous operation of the space lab began on November 2, 2000, when the Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft arrived at the station.

"The crew of the first long-term expedition (ISS-1) then boarded the station: cosmonauts Yury Gidzenko and Sergey Krikalev and NASA astronaut William Shepherd, the first commander of the ISS. Since then, crews from Russia and the United States, as well as astronauts from other countries, have worked continuously on the ISS for a quarter of a century," Roscosmos said.

Currently, the ISS crew consists of seven people delivered to the station via Russian Soyuz MS and US Crew Dragon spacecraft. "Since 2022, a cross-flight program has been in effect, whereby the crews of all US spacecraft flying to the ISS for crew rotation must include a Roscosmos cosmonaut, and the crews of Russian spacecraft must include a NASA astronaut," the state corporation recalled.

Over the past 25 years, 277 spacewalks have been performed under the ISS program: 75 from the Russian segment and 202 from the US segment. A total of 157 cosmonauts and astronauts from ten countries have worked outside the orbital laboratory over the past quarter of a century. The longest spacewalk, lasting eight hours and 56 minutes, was performed by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001, while NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria holds the record for the total duration of extravehicular activity.