It's becoming crowded in space. There is a record number of 19 people in the heavens. The record was broken after a three-person crew on a Russian Soyuz capsule docked at the ISS. On the recent mission were a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts. They brought the number of residents on the ISS to 12. Chinese astronauts are also part of the record. There are three "taikonauts" on the Tiangong Space Station. The remaining four space travellers are part of SpaceX's latest mission. That project saw a historic first ever civilian spacewalk.
There is a point of contention over the record. NASA and the U.S. military regard the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space as being 80 km above sea level. With this measure, the record for humans in space was set at 20 in May 2023. However, the conventional definition of the edge of space is called the Karman Line. The International Aeronautical Federation puts this at an altitude of 100 km above sea level. The new record uses this definition. The Karman Line is used to differentiate between what constitutes an aircraft and a spacecraft.
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Sources- https://mashable.com/article/nasa-record-number-of-humans-in-space
- https://www.space.com/new-record-19-people-orbiting-earth-soyuz-iss
- https://www.iflscience.com/new-world-record-set-with-19-humans-in-earth-orbit-at-the-same-time-75926
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