A cosmic record was set this week when humans achieved the highest number of people ever concurrently in Earth's orbit. The record-setting number came in at 17.
Taking off at 9:31 a.m. Beijing time on Tuesday, May 30, the Chinese Shenzhou 16 mission made history. It added three people to orbit for a total of 17 at once, Space.com reported. The new record beats the previous one set in September 2021 when 14 people were concurrently in orbit.
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The record was not planned, as the number of people in space was set by four different teams working independently, including two Chinese, one international, and one private.
The four space teams consist of the three-person Shenzhou 16, three-person Shenzhou 15, seven-person Expedition 69, and four-person Axiom-2.
Expedition 69 is the most diverse, consisting of cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia's Roscosmos and astronauts Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, and Warren "Woody" Hoburg of NASA. It also included Emirati astronaut Sultan al Neyadi. The crew is stationed on the International Space Station.
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Axiom-2 consisted of Axiom Space astronaut Peggy Whitson, private astronaut John Shoffner, and Saudi astronauts Ali al Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. The four were the second private crew to visit the space station. They departed to return to Earth on Tuesday, meaning the 17-person record was achieved only briefly.
Coincidentally, Barnawi also holds the title of the 600th person and first Saudi woman in space, and she is the first Arab woman in orbit.