We’ve reached a record number of humans in space, NASA announces (Image Credit: Mashable)
After Wednesday’s launch to the @Space_Station, there are now 19 humans in orbit—a new record for humanity.
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— NASA (@NASA) September 13, 2024
The mission included NASA astronaut Don Pettit and cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, who joined nine people already living in the space lab: NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams, and cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.
Another three people — Li Cong, Li Guangsu, and Ye Guangfu — are aboard China’s Tiangong space station, and there’s a four-person crew onboard the Crew Dragon Resilience, part of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission. The four include civilians Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Jared Isaacman. Gillis and Isaacman conducted a historic first-ever civilian spacewalk on Sept. 12.
All this history-making isn’t entirely good news, though. Two of the record-breaking group aboard the ISS, Wilmore and Williams, were previously set to return to Earth aboard Boeing’s Starliner vessel. Surprise propulsion issues left them stranded in space before they were boarded with the ISS crew. The Starliner was sent back to Earth solo, and the two will return aboard a SpaceX vessel.
The previous record of humans in space, 17, was put up last year, after the successful launch of the three-person team aboard China’s Shenzhou 16 mission.
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