Till lately, the outer space was a no
man’s land. Things moved there but slowly. Only a handful dared to even imagine
going there, fewer still set foot on it. All this, is set to change. With a new
set of players minding the business of inter-galactic travel nothing is going
to remain private or unexplored… Even the sky is not the limit
By Cara Benette
Even five decades after the first human
being stepped into the outer space, space travel, has been an exclusive
preserve of governments, out of reach of a bulk of the planet’s seven
billion people who hardly get an opportunity to travel freely or earn
their astronaut wings. Till date only 546 humans from some 38 countries
have traveled beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. A majority of them remained
just a few hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface, three of them
only completed a sub-orbital flight; 533 reached the Earth orbit, 24
traveled beyond low Earth orbit and only 12 walked on the Moon.
All those who wished to go there had to
hitch a ride in a Soviet, American or Chinese spacecraft. Even today, a
handful of government organizations like NASA, Russian Federal Space
Agency (Roscosmos), China National Space Administration (CNSA), European
Space Agency (ESA), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) dominate the outer space.
Since Vostok 1’s first human spaceflight
in 1961, each visit ignited the human desire to stay longer each time
and come back again. From a few hours to days and months, the Apollo,
Salyut, Skylab, Mir and International Space Station programs taught
humans to stay longer in the outer space. There was a time when Russian
cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov held the record for the longest single
spaceflight in human history. He stayed onboard Mir space station for
more than 14 months (437 days 18 hours) during one trip. Sergei Krikalev
broke his record and holds the record spending the maximum 803 days, 9
hours and 39 minutes, or 2.2 years in space over the span of six
spaceflights on board Soyuz, Space Shuttle, Mir, and International Space
Station. As on date, the longest period of continuous human presence in
space is 14 years and 20 days on board the International Space Station.
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