First of all, thank you very much, also from my side, for inviting us here today.
Of course one of the big things was that we upgraded the international space station from a three-person crew at the start of our mission to a six-person crew. The international space station is now so big that it takes about two-and-a-half to three people to maintain the space station. If you want to do science and technology research on the space station, you need these extra persons.
This happened with our crew. We went from three to six, which meant that we did more than 1,000 hours of science and more than 100 experiments throughout our mission. This was unprecedented. This is now ongoing with the six-person crew on board the ISS.
Another first that we had during our mission is the HTV, the new Japanese cargo vehicle. You need to supply all those people with goods, but also with experiments and new things to do. The Japanese cargo vehicle flew for the first time.
If we talk about the international space station, what we mean is that it's really international. The HTV was a Japanese vehicle, but it was captured with the Canadian robot arm in space. The arm was operated by an American astronaut, Nicole Stott, our colleague. The HTV and the station were under my command. Bob was the safety officer and had oversight of the entire operation. The command of the space station at that moment was under Russian Gennady Padalka.
All those control centres on the ground and all those teams and all those engineers on the ground also worked together to make this one single mission, the HTV mission, a success.
The international space station is really international, and we show every single day that it works and that people from around the globe can work together.