SpaceX Crew-1 Astronauts Broke the Record for Longest Period Spent in Outer Space by Humans.
Lo and behold as our generation witnesses history; that’s after the SpaceX Crew-1 Astronauts mission surpassed the all-time American record (84 days) that held ground for a long 47 years, the longest period spent in space by astronauts. Interestingly enough, that record was actually broken on the 7th of February last year, which marked the 85th year for the crew in space. They are set to return to Earth in the next six months, upon completing their mission.
The crew took off on Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft on November 16 2020, boarding four additional members to the already existing three members at the International Space Station, as a part of long-duration Expedition 64 mission.
There were not much words to describe that amazing achievement. However, the NASA Commercial Crew were quick to celebrate this achievement and tweeted from their official Twitter account: ‘’Crew Dragon has officially been in space for more than 100 days!’’ on 24 of February.
NASA did a great job selecting highly qualified astronauts for this mission:
Commanded by Michael Hopkins, responsible for all phases of flight and flight engineering aboard the station;
Second commander Victor Glover, responsible for spacecraft systems and performance;
Shannon Walker, a mission specialist working with Hopkins for monitoring the spacecraft functions;
Lastly Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, the first Japanese astronaut to perform a spacewalk outside the space station, who is also assisting Shannon in monitoring the spacecraft.
The crew had planned to perform a variety of activities in space during that period, as part of the Commercial Crew Program of SpaceX, which is mainly aiming to find more ways to make space more accessible to the general public, and lower the cost for future commercial touristic space trips.
Some of the research that this mission is aiming to reveal are the effects of dietary improvements on the space traveler’s physiology, the effects of long-period stays in space on the brain functions and the heart tissue, and the health is effected overall. The mission will also include NASA astronaut, Glover, who will be collecting samples from different materials in space to perform research back in earth.
“With the high cadence of missions SpaceX performs, it really gives us incredible insight into this commercial system and helps us make informed decisions about the status of our missions,” Said NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, Kathy Lueders.
So with new discoveries and new space records being broken every day, SpaceX and NASA are proving that they are getting closer to what they are searching for and this generation might be the one to witness the opening of the wide gate for humans to go to space. And, who knows? You might be booking a vacation flight to the moon sooner than you ever thought.