China's Shenzhou 16 mission has set a historic milestone of 17 people in space at the same time

China and the USA are planning to set up stations on the Moon and Mars. Thus, there will be a relatively large number of people outside our planet. But this will not happen any time soon. So far, there are usually about a dozen people in space at the same time, but a new record has recently been set.

Here's What We Know

The historic achievement was set thanks to China's Shenzhou 16 mission and the commercial Axiom Mission 2. Because of the overlapping schedules, there are now 17 inhabitants of Earth in space at the same time.

Spacex Crew-6:

• Stephen Bowen;
• Warren Hoburg;
• Sultan Al Neyadi;
• Andrey Fedyaev.

Soyuz MS-22:

• Sergey Prokopyev;
• Dmitry Petelin;
• Francisco Rubio.

Axiom Mission 2:

• Peggy Whitson;
• Ali Alqarni;
• John Shoffner;
• Rayyanah Barnawi.

Shenzhou 15:

• Fei Junlong;
• Zhang Lu;
• Deng Qingming.

Shenzhou 16:

• Jing Haipeng;
• Gui Haichao;
• Zhu Yanzhu.

The Chinese astronauts are on the Tiangong station. The crews of Soyuz MS-22, Crew-6 and Axiom Mission 2 are working on the International Space Station (ISS). Note that four astronauts from the commercial mission will soon depart for Earth.

Prior to the launch of Shenzhou 16, there were 14 astronauts in space. This is the previous record. That was also the number of people on the ISS and China's Tingong station in autumn 2021.

Source: Who is in Space