Overview

• NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner arrived at the ISS, bringing the total number of people in orbit to 19.
• This surpasses the previous record of 17 people in orbit, set in May 2023.
• SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission includes the first-ever spacewalk by private astronauts, with Scott Poteet and Sarah Gillis making history.
• The ISS currently hosts 12 astronauts and cosmonauts, while China's Tiangong Space Station has three taikonauts onboard.
• The Polaris Dawn mission also marks the furthest a crewed vehicle has flown from Earth since the Apollo program.