It ’s “ rush hour ” in Earth compass at the moment . With three new humans arriving at the International Space Station ( ISS ) yesterday , September 11 , plus the all - civilian Polaris Dawn charge , a amount of 19 people are orb Earth decently now – that ’s a fresh mankind record .
A US spaceman and two Russian astronaut – Don Pettit , Aleksey Ovchinin , and Ivan Vagner – have unite nine others currently onboard the ISS : Matthew Dominick , Michael Barratt , Jeanette Epps , Alexander Grebenkin , Oleg Kononenko , Tracy Caldwell Dyson , Nikolai Chub , and the two spaceman delight anextended stay , Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams .
Elsewhere in domain , there are three “ taikonauts ” – Ye Guangfu , Li Cong , and Li Guangsu – onboard the Chinese Tiangong Space Station .
There are also four civilians in area – Jared Isaacman , Scott Poteet , Sarah Gillis , and Anna Menon – who are taking part in SpaceX’sPolaris Dawn mission , and just carried out the first - ever secret place walk .
With a total of 19 humans , it beat the previous record for the most amount of humanity in Earth ’s orbit at one time . That record was place last class in May 2023 when17 people were in orbit , including cosmonaut Frank Rubio who was also on anunplanned prolonged stay .
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Bear in mind that the current sequence is not the track record for the largest number of people in space ( it all calculate on pretty fiddly definitions of “ space ” ) . Using the US definition of place at 80 kilometre ( 50 miles ) , that phonograph record was broken in May 2023 when a aggregate of 20 people were in space .
This take mass on the ISS and the Tiangong space station , plus two private sub - orbital space ventures by Virgin and Axiom Space . Sub - orbital flights do not revolve the Earth . rather , they follow a curve trajectory that reaches the bound of outer space and then fall back to Earth .
But back to September 2024 , the currentPolaris Dawnmission is particularly novel and exciting . cruise in a Crew Dragon spacecraft , is the further from Earth a crewed vehicle has fly since the geological era of the Apollo programme in the sixties and early ' 70s . Gillis and Menon also earn the phonograph record for the furthest a woman has ever flown from Earth .
On September 12 , the Polaris Dawn deputation made even more story by conducting the first spacewalk ever try by secret citizen using SpaceX’snewly project spacesuits .
