Record number of people in space

On May 31, 2023, a new record was set for the number of people being simultaneously in Earth orbit. There were 17 people on two space stations at the same time. The day before, Chinese ship “Shenzhou-16” delivered 3 more astronauts to the Tiangong orbital station where there were already 3 people presented. At that time, there were more 11 people already working on neighboring ISS - the crew of Russian ship “Soyuz MS-23” of 3 people, Crew Dragon of 4 people, and 4 tourists from AX-2 mission of Axiom Space private company.

The previous record was set on September 16 in 2021, when there were 14 astronauts in orbit at the same time.

The new record was also one of the shortest in duration – in about 12 hours after the crew arrived at Tiangong, the tourists from AX-2 mission went home.