Record 19 People in Space as Soyuz Launches New Crew to ISS

Today, the number of people in Earth orbit reached a new record as a Russian Soyuz capsule launched three new crew members toward the International Space Station (ISS). With this latest launch, the total number of people in orbit has hit 19, surpassing the previous record of 17 set last year.

The Soyuz capsule, which launched today, is carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. They are expected to dock with the ISS around 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT), just three hours after their launch.

Once aboard, Pettit, Ovchinin, and Vagner will join the nine people already on the ISS. This group includes NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Barry Wilmore, and Suni Williams, along with Russian cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.

Notably, Wilmore and Williams were initially scheduled to return home already. They had launched in June on Boeing's Starliner capsule for Crew Flight Test (CFT), the first crewed mission for the spacecraft. Due to thruster issues, Starliner remained docked at the ISS for an extended three months. NASA has decided to return Starliner to Earth without a crew, which happened over the weekend. Wilmore and Williams will now return on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February.

In addition to the ISS crew, there are currently three astronauts aboard China's Tiangong space station — Li Cong, Li Guangsu, and Ye Guangfu of the Shenzhou 18 mission. Meanwhile, four astronauts are aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon on the Polaris Dawn mission, which launched on September 10. This Crew Dragon, named Resilience, is already farther from Earth than any crewed vehicle since the Apollo era. The Polaris Dawn mission aims to make further history, including a planned private spacewalk by Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, scheduled for early September 12.

The overall record for the most people in space is 20, set in May 2023 and matched in January 2024. This record includes six space tourists who briefly joined 14 orbiting astronauts on suborbital flights with Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity. For those considering the Kármán line — the 62-mile-high boundary of space — the record for the most people in space is 19, set during Blue Origin’s NS-19 flight on December 11, 2021, and matched today.