Four cosmonauts living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have broken a 47-year-old record subsequent to investing the longest time in space by a crew launched from U.S. soil.
The astronauts, collectively known as Crew-1 — Michael Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Victor Glover of NASA and Soichi Noguchi of the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) — were likewise the first full mission group to be moved into orbit by a private company. (A more modest show mission to the ISS, maintained by only two astronauts who remained in space for a brief timeframe, went before Crew-1 by a while.) Crew-1 showed up onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule launched into orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 15, Live Science sister site Space.com recently detailed.
On Sunday (Feb. 7), the Crew-1 astronauts had their spot in the history books in the wake of going through their 85th day aboard the ISS, as indicated by NASA.
The past record of 84 days was set in 1974 by the Skylab 4 crew, the last mission onboard NASA’s first space station Skylab. From that point forward, other duration record-breaking astronauts have all been part of missions launched from different nations. SpaceX’s Crew-1 is the initially monitored mission to launch from the U.S. since the space shuttle was resigned in 2011, as indicated by NASA.
NASA took to Twitter to praise the accomplishment, which happened to match with Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Florida.
The Crew-1 astronauts will in all likelihood broaden their record as they complete their six-month stay on the ISS. The next manned SpaceX mission is relied upon to launch in April when Crew-2 heads into orbit to supplant their archetypes, as per Space.com.