Four astronauts live on board International Space Station The ISS broke a record of 47 after spending the longest time in space with a crew launched from US soil.
The astronauts, collectively known as Crew-1 — Michael Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover of NASA, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Space Agency (JAXA) — were the first full-fledged mission crew to be brought into orbit by a private company. (A smaller test mission for the International Space Station, made up of only two astronauts who stayed in space for a short period, preceded Crew-1 by several months.) Crew-1 arrived aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule launched in orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from the Kennedy Space Center In Florida on Nov.15, the sister site to Live Science I mentioned Space.com earlier.
On Sunday (February 7), the Crew-1 astronauts took their place in the history books after spending their 85th day aboard the International Space Station, According to NASA.
The previous record of 84 days was set in 1974 by the crew of Skylab 4, the last mission aboard NASA’s first space station. Skylab. Since then, other record-breaking astronauts have all been part of missions launched from other countries. SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission is the first manned mission to be launched from the United States since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, according to NASA.
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NASA took to Twitter to celebrate the achievement, which coincided with the Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Florida.
Rise n ‘shine, time to play! Space-based #SuperBowlSunday Highlights: 🏆SpaceX Crew-1NASA_Astronauts breaks US space record US space ~ 45 minutes after kick-off, Space_Station flies over #SBLV Tampa, Florida Check out the details: https://t.co / 5zqMM5imGV pic .twitter.com/oE1yMtO9XrFebruary 7, 2021
The Astronauts of Crew 1 will almost certainly expand their roster when they complete their six-month stay on the International Space Station. The upcoming manned SpaceX mission is expected to launch in April when Crew-2 heads into orbit to replace their predecessors. According to Space.com.
Originally published on Live Science.
