Record-Breaking 19 People in Orbit as NASA's Don Pettit Arrives at International Space Station

A new record has been set with 19 people orbiting the Earth at the same time, as NASA astronaut Don Pettit arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday. Pettit, along with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, launched on the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, joining the nine astronauts and cosmonauts already on board the ISS.

The trio's arrival marks a record-breaking 19 people in orbit, including the three Chinese taikonauts on the Tiangong space station and the four passengers on SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience on the Polaris Dawn mission. This surpasses the previous record of 20 people in space, which included suborbital flights.

Pettit, 69, is on his fourth trip to space and will spend six months on the ISS as part of Expedition 71 and 72. His arrival allows NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson to return to Earth on a Soyuz spacecraft with ISS crewmates Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. Kononenko, already the record holder for days in space, will have spent 1,111 days in space by the time he lands.

The ISS has two more people on board than its normal crew of seven due to NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams being left behind on the station when their ride, Boeing's Starliner, departed without them. They will fly home in February on board the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom.

Pettit's arrival marks another milestone in his illustrious career, having spent 369 days in space and set to add another six months to his cumulative time in space, making him the second NASA astronaut with the most cumulative days in space, behind Peggy Whitson.