Records and firsts in spaceflight are broadly divided into crewed and uncrewed categories. Records involving animal spaceflight have also been noted in earlier experimental flights, typically to establish the feasibility of sending humans to outer space.
The notion of "firsts" in spaceflight follows a long tradition of firsts in aviation, but is also closely tied to the Space Race. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union and the United States competed to be the first countries to accomplish various feats. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial orbital satellite. In 1961, Soviet Vostok 1 cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space and orbit the Earth, and in 1969 American Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon. No human has traveled beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, when the Apollo program ended.
During the 1970s, the Soviet Union directed its energies to human habitation of space stations of increasingly long durations. In the 1980s, the United States began launching its Space Shuttles, which carried larger crews and thus could increase the number of people in space at a given time. Following their first mission of détente on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the Soviet Union and the United States again collaborated with each other on the Shuttle-Mir initiative, efforts which led to the International Space Station (ISS), which has been continuously inhabited by humans for over 20 years.
Other firsts in spaceflight involve demographics, private enterprise, and distance. Dozens of countries have sent at least one traveler to space. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, aboard Vostok 6. In the early 21st century, private companies joined government agencies in crewed spaceflight: in 2004, the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded crewed craft to enter space; in 2020, SpaceX's Dragon 2 became the first privately developed crewed vehicle to reach orbit when it ferried a crew to the ISS. As of 2025, the uncrewed probe Voyager 1 is the most distant artificial object from the Earth, part of a small class of vehicles that are leaving the Solar System.
Note: Some space records are disputed as a result of ambiguities surrounding the border of space. Most records follow the FAI definition of the space border which the FAI sets at an altitude of 100 km (62.14 mi). By contrast, US agencies define the border of space at 50 mi (80.47 km).
15 September 1966
Alexei Leonov, Valeri Kubasov – USSR
USSR
Soyuz T-15 visiting Mir and Salyut 7
Soyuz TM-22 (Mir EO-20) Soyuz TM-28/Soyuz TM-29 Mir EO 27
Soyuz TMA-17M (Expedition 44/45) Soyuz MS-11 (Expedition 57/58/59) Soyuz MS-24/MS-25 (Expedition 69/70/71) Expedition 71
Note: The six SpaceShipTwo flights surpass the U.S. definition of spaceflight (50 mi (80.47 km)), but fall short of the Kármán line (100 km (62.14 mi)), the definition used for FAI space recordkeeping.
Notes:
The record for most time in space is held by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, who has spent 1,111 days in space over five missions. He broke the record of Gennady Padalka on 4 February 2024 at 07:30:08 UTC during his fifth spaceflight aboard Soyuz MS-24/25 for a one year long-duration mission on the ISS.[24] He later became the first person to stay 900, 1,000, and 1,100 days in space on 25 February 2024, 4 June 2024, and 12 September 2024 respectively.[25][26] Gennady Padalka is currently second, having spent 878 days in space. He himself had broken the all-time duration record on 28 June 2015 when he surpassed the previous record holder, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who spent 803 days, 9 hours and 39 minutes (about 2.2 years) during six spaceflights on Soyuz, the Space Shuttle, Mir, and the International Space Station.[27][28][29]
As of 25 May 2025[update],[30] the 50 space travelers with the most total time in space are:
Color key:
NASA astronaut Christina Koch holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman (328 days), returning on February 6, 2020.[36] During Expedition 61, she surpassed NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson's 289 days from 2016-2017.
An international partnership consisting of Russia, the United States, Canada, Japan, and the member states of the European Space Agency have jointly maintained a continuous human presence in space since 31 October 2000 when Soyuz TM-31 was launched. Two days later, it docked with the International Space Station.[14][39] Since then space has been continuously occupied for 24 years, 206 days.[14]
The International Space Station has been continuously occupied by a Russian and US crew member since 2 November 2000 (24 years, 204 days).[14][39] It broke the record of 9 years and 358 days of the Soviet/Russian Space Station Mir on 23 October 2010.[39]
Valery Bykovsky flew solo for 4 days, 23 hours in Vostok 5 from 14 to 19 June 1963.[40] The flight set a space endurance record which was broken in 1965 by the (non-solo) Gemini 5 flight. The Apollo program included long solo spaceflight, and during the Apollo 16 mission, Ken Mattingly orbited solo around the Moon for more than 3 days and 9 hours.
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission stayed for 74 hours 59 minutes and 40 seconds (over 3 days) on the lunar surface after they landed on 11 December 1972.[41] They performed three EVAs (extra-vehicular activity) totaling 22 hours 3 minutes, 57 seconds. As Apollo commanders were the first to leave the LM and the last to get back in, Cernan's EVA time was slightly longer.[41]
Ronald Evans of Apollo 17 mission stayed in lunar orbit for 6 days and 4 hours (148 hours)[42] along with five mice. For the solo portion of a flight around the Moon, Ken Mattingly on Apollo 16 spent 1 hour 38 minutes longer than Evans' solo duration.
The Apollo 13 crew (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert), while passing over the far side of the Moon at an altitude of 254 km (158 mi) from the lunar surface, were 400,171 km (248,655 mi) from Earth.[43] This record-breaking distance was reached at 00:21 UTC on 15 April 1970.[43]
Polaris Dawn crew Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon fired their Crew Dragon Resilience's Draco thrusters on 11 September 2024 at 00:27 UTC, at 15 hours and 4 minutes after liftoff and achieved a record apogee altitude of 874.95 miles (1,408.10 km).[44]
The Apollo 10 crew (Thomas Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene Cernan) achieved the highest speed relative to Earth ever attained by humans: 39,897 kilometers per hour (11,082 meters per second or 24,791 miles per hour, about 32 times the speed of sound and 0.0037% of the speed of light).[14] The record was set 26 May 1969.[14]
The record for uncrewed spacecraft is held by the Parker Solar Probe at 191.7 km/s, about 1/1600 (or 0.064%) the speed of light, relative to the Sun. This speed was first reached in December 2024.
Both of these are the record for the largest total number of spacewalks by a male and a female, and the most cumulative time spent on spacewalks by a male and a female.
The first animals to enter space were fruit flies launched by the United States in 1947 aboard a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 68 miles (109 km).[59] They were also the first animals to safely return from space.[59] Albert II, a rhesus monkey, became the first mammal in space aboard a U.S. V-2 rocket on June 14, 1949, and died on reentry due to a parachute failure. The first dogs in space were launched 22 July 1951 aboard a Soviet R-1V. "Tsygin" and "Dezik" reached a height of 100 km (62 mi) and safely parachuted back to Earth. This flight preceded the first American canine space mission by two weeks.[60]: 21
Laika was a Soviet female canine launched on 3 November 1957 on Sputnik 2. The technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so there was no expectation for survival. She died several hours into flight. Belka and Strelka became the first canines to safely return to Earth from orbit on 19 August 1960.
On 31 January 1961, through NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2 mission the chimpanzee Ham became the first great ape in space.[61]
Soviet space dogs Veterok (Ветерок, "Light Wind") and Ugolyok (Уголёк, "Ember") were launched on 22 February 1966 on board Cosmos 110 and spent 22 days in orbit before landing on 16 March.
An assortment of animals including a pair of Russian tortoises, as well as wine flies and mealworms flew around the Moon with a number of other biological specimens including seeds and bacteria on a circumlunar mission aboard the Soviet Zond 5 spacecraft on 18 September 1968.[59] It had been launched by a Proton-K rocket on 14 September.[59]
Zond 5 came within 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) of the Moon and then successfully returned to Earth, the first spacecraft in history to return safely to Earth from the Moon.[59]
Closest approach to the Sun: distance of 0.041 AU (6,000,000 kilometres; 3,800,000 mi).[93][94] This makes the probe the fastest object in the Solar System apart from comets (overtaking asteroid 2005 HC4).
longest time in lunar orbit, 147 hours, 48 minutes
Because Earth moves around the sun faster than Voyager 1 is traveling from Earth, the distance between Earth and the spacecraft actually decreases at certain times of the year.
India has become the first nation to send a satellite into orbit around Mars on its first attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so.