List of spaceflight records
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, 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, 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.
First independent suborbital and orbital human spaceflight by country
Human spaceflight firsts
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. By contrast, US agencies define the border of space at 50 mi.| First | Person | Mission | Country | Date | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yuri Gagarin | Vostok 1 |  bulleted list|Person to make suborbital flight|Person to land in water |Person to manually pilot spacecraft.Most spaceflightsMost launches from Earth
Most orbital launches overall
Total human spaceflight time by countryMost time in spaceThe 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. 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. 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 during six spaceflights on Soyuz, the Space Shuttle, Mir, and the International Space Station., the 50 space travelers with the most total time in space are: Color key:
|
Russia