A new milestone in space exploration has been attained, with 19 people presently orbiting Earth, setting a record. The previous high was 17, set last year. On September 11, a Russian Soyuz capsule launched three astronauts, NASA’s Don Pettit and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, to the International Space Station (ISS), raising the total number of humans in orbit.
The Soyuz crew is slated to arrive at the ISS about 3:30 p.m. EDT. When they arrive, they will join nine other astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the station, including NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Barry Wilmore, and Suni Williams, as well as cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.
Wilmore and Williams took part in Boeing’s Crew Flight Test (CFT), the first crewed voyage with the Starliner capsule. Originally scheduled for a 10-day trip, the crew was delayed owing to thruster troubles aboard the Starliner. NASA elected to return the capsule uncrewed, with Wilmore and Williams planned to return in February 2024 aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
This event marks another milestone in human spaceflight, with an unprecedented number of astronauts operating in orbit at the same time.
