It's becoming a little crowded space. There is now a record number 19 people in the heavens. The record was broken after the three-person crew board a Russian Soyuz capsule docked the International Space Station (ISS). On the recent mission were NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. They brought the number residents the ISS to 12. Chinese astronauts are also part the record. They have three "taikonauts" working the Tiangong Space Station. The remaining four space travellers are part SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission. That project saw a historic first ever civilian spacewalk last Thursday.
There is a point contention regarding the recent record. That is the definition where outer space starts. NASA and the U.S. military regard the boundary separating Earth's atmosphere and outer space as being 80 km sea level. With this interpretation, the record humans in space is 20, set May 2023 and tied in January this year. However, the conventional definition of the edge of space is called the Karman Line. The International Aeronautical Federation puts this line an altitude of 100 km above sea level. The new record uses this definition. The Karman Line is used legal purposes to differentiate what constitutes an aircraft and a spacecraft.
