Population of space reaches record-breaking 14 people

PanARMENIAN.Net - Earth orbit has never been so crowded. The launch of SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission last night (Sept. 15) brought the population of the final frontier to 14, one more than the previous high, Space reports.

Those 14 folks are living aboard three different spacecraft. The Inspiration4 crew — Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski — are zooming around Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

Meanwhile, the International Space Station currently hosts seven people: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei; Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy; Japan's Akihiko Hoshide; and the European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet. And Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo are living aboard Tianhe, the core module for China's planned Tiangong space station.

"All the best to the crew of Inspiration 4!" Vande Hei wrote on Twitter before SpaceX's launch. "Private astronaut missions are part of the plan to help NASA meet its future needs. Those missions enable a strong market in low-Earth orbit, a market in which NASA will be one of many customers. Go, Inspiration! Go!"