Living in space isn't like the movies. There are no dramatic explosions every five minutes, and mostly, it’s about plumbing, science, and staring at the Earth until your eyes hurt. When people talk about the International Space Station (ISS), they often get the missions mixed up. They look at Expedition 33 and Expedition 60 and think they’re just numbers in a sequence. They aren't. They represent two totally different eras of how humans live off-planet.
One was about finding our feet after the Shuttle retired. The other was about preparing for the moon.
Honestly, the jump between these two missions is staggering. If you look at the tech used during Expedition 33 in 2012 versus what was happening during Expedition 60 in 2019, you’re looking at the evolution of modern spaceflight in a nutshell. It’s the difference between "we're just trying to keep the lights on" and "we're actually building a laboratory for the future."
The Gritty Reality of Expedition 33
Expedition 33 kicked off in September 2012. Sunita Williams was in command. She’s a legend, obviously. Along with Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide, she was basically running a high-tech orbital apartment that was still feeling the "new car smell" of the completed assembly, yet dealing with the logistical nightmare of having no American Space Shuttle to bring up supplies.
They were reliant on the Soyuz. That’s a tight squeeze.
During this mission, the crew grew to six people when Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitskiy, and Evgeny Tarelkin joined them. What most people forget is that Expedition 33 was a pivot point for commercial space. This was when the SpaceX Dragon (the CRS-1 mission) made its first official contracted cargo delivery. Think about that. Before 2012, the idea of a private company docking with the ISS was still a "maybe." By the end of Expedition 33, it was a "must."
The science back then was grueling. They were doing a lot of work on how microgravity messes with the human neck and spine. It’s called the Spinal Ultrasound investigation. Basically, astronauts get taller in space because their discs expand. Sounds cool until you realize it causes massive back pain and potential long-term nerve issues. Williams and her crew were the guinea pigs for understanding how to stop astronauts from hurting themselves just by existing in 0g.
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They also dealt with a major power issue. A Sequential Shunt Unit (SSU) failed. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a regulator for the solar power. Without it, the station loses juice. Hoshide and Williams had to go out on a spacewalk to fix it using, quite literally, a spare bolt and a lot of prayer. It was one of those "MacGyver" moments that NASA is famous for.
Fast Forward to Expedition 60: The New Age
Now, skip ahead to 2019. Expedition 60. The vibe is totally different.
The commander was Aleksey Ovchinin, but the star power on this mission was immense. You had Nick Hague, Christina Koch, Alexander Skvortsov, Luca Parmitano, and Andrew Morgan. By this point, the ISS wasn't just a place to survive; it was a factory.
Expedition 60 was obsessed with the future. They weren't just checking if spines grew; they were 3D printing biological tissues. The BioFabrication Facility (BFF) was tested during this window. The goal? Eventually printing human organs in space because gravity on Earth makes the "ink" (cells) collapse before they can form a structure. In space, they just float in place. It’s wild.
Then there was the LEMUR project. No, not the animal. Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robots. These are tiny robots with "gecko-inspired" grippers that can crawl on the outside of the station. Expedition 60 was essentially the testing ground for the robotics we will use on the Gateway station orbiting the moon.
Why the Gap Matters
If you compare the two, you notice the shift in international cooperation and commercial dependency. During Expedition 33, we were desperate for Dragon to work. By Expedition 60, we were already looking at the Bigelow Expanded Activity Module (BEAM) and thinking about how to add more rooms to the house.
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The science moved from "can we live here?" to "what can we make here that we can't make on Earth?"
During Expedition 60, Christina Koch was also well on her way to breaking the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. That’s not just a "girl power" statistic. It’s critical data. Men and women react differently to radiation and bone density loss. Having Koch up there during Expedition 60 provided the medical community with the most robust data set they’d ever had on female physiology in deep-space-simulated environments.
The Misconceptions About Mission Numbers
People think the missions are continuous. They are, but the crews rotate in "increments." Expedition 33 didn't just end and 34 began with a clean slate. It’s a rolling handover. However, the technological leap between Expedition 33 and Expedition 60 is where the real story lies.
In 2012, we were worried about the station’s lifespan. There was talk of de-orbiting it by 2020.
By 2019, during Expedition 60, the conversation had shifted to: "How do we keep this running until 2030 so the private sector can take over?"
It’s a massive psychological shift for NASA.
What Really Happened During the Handover?
A lot of people ask what the "daily life" difference was. During Expedition 33, internet access was slow. Like, early 2000s dial-up slow. Astronauts could tweet, but it was a process. By Expedition 60, the station had undergone a massive communications upgrade. They had better bandwidth than some people in rural America.
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This allowed for more "Live" events. We started seeing the ISS as a place where people lived, not just a laboratory.
But it wasn't all fun and games. Expedition 60 had to deal with the fallout of the Soyuz MS-10 abort that happened shortly before. Nick Hague was on that flight. It crumpled and fell back to Earth. He lived, obviously, and finally made it up for Expedition 60, but that shadow hung over the mission. It reminded everyone that despite the 3D printers and the gecko-robots, space is still trying to kill you.
The Actionable Reality of Space History
If you're a student of aerospace or just a nerd for history, you need to look at these two expeditions as the "Before and After" of the modern era.
- Study the SpaceX CRS-1 logs from the Expedition 33 era. It shows exactly how close that mission came to failing and how it changed the trajectory of Elon Musk's company.
- Look into the BioFabrication Facility results from Expedition 60. If we ever solve the organ donor shortage, the seeds of that success were planted during this 2019 mission.
- Compare the EVA (Spacewalk) logs. In Expedition 33, they were fixing basic exterior components. In Expedition 60, they were installing the International Docking Adapters (IDA-3) to allow for a whole new generation of spacecraft to dock.
The ISS is often criticized as a "bridge to nowhere," but when you look at the evolution from Expedition 33 to Expedition 60, you see the bridge being built in real-time. We went from basic survival and spinal ultrasounds to 3D printing tissue and testing autonomous robots.
Next time you see a dot of light moving across the night sky, remember it’s not just a tin can. It’s a decade-by-decade evolution of human ingenuity. We aren't just visiting space anymore; we're learning how to work there.
Check the NASA archives for the "Station-to-Ground" transcripts from both eras. The difference in tone—from the cautious 2012 chatter to the high-efficiency 2019 workflows—tells the whole story. You’ll see the shift from "Can we do this?" to "How fast can we do this?" and that makes all the difference for the upcoming Artemis missions to the moon.