Soyuz MS-26 Crew Sets New Record of 19 People in Orbit

The launch of three new crew members to the International Space Station today is setting a new record for the number of people in orbit at one time. Two Russians and an American lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome early this afternoon and will join nine colleagues already aboard the ISS. In addition, three Chinese taikonauts are on China’s Tiangong-3 space station and the four-person private astronaut crew of Polaris Dawn is in their second day of a five-day mission. In all, 19 people are in orbit right now.

Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit launched on Soyuz MS-26 at 12:23 pm ET (9:23 pm local time in Baikonur) and will dock with the ISS just over three hours later at 3:33 pm ET today.

This is Vagner’s second spaceflight and Pettit’s fourth. Ovchinin is on either his third or fourth spaceflight, depending on how they are counted. He flew to ISS on Soyuz TMA-20M and Soyuz MS-12, but he also was on the aborted Soyuz MS-10 mission with NASA’s Nick Hague in October 2018. They lifted off from Baikonur on a Soyuz FG rocket, but one of the four solid rocket boosters strapped to the side hit the rocket when it detached two minutes and 45 seconds later. The Soyuz rocket is designed with automated abort systems that separated their capsule and boosted it high enough to escape the disintegrating rocket and make a safe landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan 34 minutes later. NASA decided it reached a high enough altitude it counts as a spaceflight for Hague, but it’s not clear if Russia counts it as a spaceflight for Ovchinin.

Hague and Ovchinin got all the way to ISS on Soyuz MS-12 in February 2019. They will be reunited soon. Hague is a member of Crew-9 that will launch on September 24.

The Soyuz MS-26 crew is replacing cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson. Typical ISS crew rotations take place every six months, but in this case Kononenko and Chub have been there for a year. They arrived on Soyuz MS-24 in September 2023. Dyson came aboard in March 2024 on Soyuz MS-25, a flight that included Marina Vasilevskaya, a spaceflight participant from Belarus, who only stayed for a few days. Vasilevskaya, Soyuz MS-25 commander Oleg Novitsky and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara returned to Earth on Soyuz MS-24, leaving the fresh Soyuz MS-25 for Kononenko and Chub who ended up staying for an extra crew rotation to accommodate Vasilevskaya’s visit.

Also aboard ISS are two NASA astronauts (Williams and Wilmore) who arrived on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test capsule in June and are remaining to become part of  Crew-9, and three NASA astronauts (Barratt, Dominick, and Epps) and a Russian cosmonaut (Grebenkin) who arrived on SpaceX’s Crew-8.  All in all, there are nine on ISS right now and Soyuz MS-26 will make it 12 once they dock: seven from NASA and five from Roscosmos.

China also has begun regular 6-month crew rotations on their Tiangong-3 space station. Li Guangsu, Ye Guangfu, and Li Cong arrived in April on Shenzhou-18 for the fourth crew handover.

Early yesterday, the Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center for a five-day excursion on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience. Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon already have achieved one of their goals — reaching an altitude higher than any other Earth-orbiting human spaceflight mission, 1,400.7 kilometers (870 miles), breaking the record set by Gemini 11 in 1966 of 1,373 km (853 miles).

Achievement unlocked – apogee 1,400.7 km

Forward bulkhead Draco firing during burn ???? pic.twitter.com/Z7kUTcA2CH

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 11, 2024

Polaris Dawn and Dragon at 1,400 km above Earth – the farthest humans have traveled since the Apollo program over 50 years ago pic.twitter.com/rRDeD1dY1e

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 11, 2024

The only human spaceflight missions that have gone further were the Apollo missions to the Moon (Apollo 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17) between 1968 and 1972.

Their next goal is conducting the first commercial spacewalk. The structure that is visible on top of the spacecraft is a frame to which Isaacman and Menon will attach themselves during their sequential extravehicular activities, currently scheduled for tomorrow morning, Thursday, September 12, at 2:23 am ET.

This is the first time 19 people have been in orbit at the same time. Some record-keepers count the number of people in space rather than orbit, however, which is different. The suborbital flights conducted by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic cross the imaginary line between air and space and for those few minutes anyone aboard is added to the number in space, albeit briefly.