Dust off your party dress and brush up on your waltz skills: On December 10, the U.S.- and Russian-built International Space Station will turn 15 years old. On December 10, 1998, astronaut Bob Cabana and cosmonaut counterpart Sergei Krikalev became the first people to enter the ISS.

“It was an International Space Station, and I felt it very important that we enter as an international crew,” Cabana, a four-time shuttle flyer who has led Kennedy Space Center since 2008, told Florida Today in a recent interview.

Prior to the occasion, details as to upon whom the honor would be bestowed remained a mystery. As the commander for the shuttle mission tasked with linking the ISS’ two pieces together, Cabana kept quiet to the press and even his own crew. As it turned out, the maiden voyage was a truly international affair. Crews have lived there continuously for more than 13 years, with six-person expeditions now the norm.

The International Space Station consists of two modules: The U.S.-built Unity, and the Russian Zarya (“star”). In the same Florida Today interview, Cabana recalled the tense run-up to the station’s christening. The first step was the successful launch of Zarya, also known as a Functional Cargo Block.

“It was bated breath, for sure,” Cabana remembered. “We knew that once Zarya got safely on orbit, we had a mission two weeks later. So we were all elated when everything went well.”

Cabana and his crew were then charged with connection Zarya to the Unity node in their shuttle mission that launched December 4. Though slow, the process went smoothly, and construction of the ISS was officially completed just two days later. After two space walks to connect cables and other electrical components, the station was ready accommodate its first two residents.

“Those two modules came together, and have been joined ever since, Russians and Americans in space,” Cabana said.

“It was everything that we hoped for, to be inside the space station, to get to work inside there, to prepare it for the first crew,” Cabana said. “That was a special day.”

Orbiting 260 miles above Earth, the station is the main focus of the U.S. human spaceflight program, though its continues feasibility is in question. Facing steep budget cuts, NASA may have to choose between continued operation of the ISS and exploring technologies that could facilitate manned missions beyond Earth’s orbit. Cabana doesn’t see why it has to be a choice.

“I don’t think that we need to choose,” he said. “I think they work together.”

The ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, it follows the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations, and Skylab from the U.S. In its 15 years, it’s grown into a research complex weighing more than a million pounds and stretching longer than an American football field, and it’s full potential has yet to be reached.

“It’s really neat to know that I had a role to play in that,” Cabana said. “It’s very special to see that bright star in the sky in the early evening or late morning as it goes overhead.”

Collectively, the world has but one question: Will there be cake?