Forty-eight people went into space in 2021 across eight orbital and five suborbital space flights. Twenty-one of these people (one posthumously) were awarded FAA Commercial Astronaut wings following their flights on US space tourist vehicles. The rest were not eligible because they were either professional astronauts or not Americans.

The commercial space tourism industry finally got serious in 2021, with Blue Origin’s New Shepard making its first three revenue flights. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo also made several crewed flights including the first human spaceflight from New Mexico, but it has yet to begin regular service.

Last year also marked the resumption of tourist flights to the ISS on the Russian Soyuz, now that NASA astronauts have their own ride again. The last tourist to catch a ride on a Soyuz was Canadian Guy Laliberté back in 2009.There were two tourist flights last year: a pair of Russian filmmakers went up in October and a Japanese billionaire and his assistant in December.

2021 was also a year for setting human records, in addition to astronaut records.

The record for most people in space at one time was broken not once, but twice last year. The first was in September when Inspiration 4, Soyuz MS-18, SpaceX Crew 2 and Shenzhou 12 were in orbit, totalling fourteen people for four days. The second time was in December when the New Shepard suborbital rocket joined Soyuz MS-19, SpaceX Crew 3 and Shenzhou 13 above the Karman line, making nineteen people in space for about 11 minutes.

The record for oldest person in space was also broken twice in 2021, first by 82 year old Wally Funk in July and second by 90 year old William Shatner in October, both on New Shepard flights.

Fifteen spacewalks were conducted by sixteen individual astronauts on the two active space stations. The spacewalks for the ISS included tasks like adding new solar panels, replacing old batteries, and preparing it for the new modules that arrived last year. The spacewalks for the Chinese Space Station included the first spacewalk by a Chinese woman, Wang Yaping.

Many experiments were conducted on the ISS. Our favorite experiments last year included sending tardigrades to space (deliberately), and sending dirty “laundry” to be cleaned on the ISS (also deliberately). We couldn’t figure out a way to add space concrete to the mix – but NASA did.
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People in Space Record broken twice-Article