New record!.... 20 people are in space at the same time right now.

The record for most people in space (rather than just Earth orbit) at once was reset recently, too, and lasted an even shorter amount of time. For about 5 minutes, there were 20 people off the planet. 

That record was set by the six members of Virgin Galactic Unity 25 SpaceShipTwo crew, whose suborbital spaceflight coincided with three Chinese taikonauts living aboard Tiangong and 11 astronauts, cosmonauts and spaceflight participants on board the International Space Station. 

SpaceShipTwoUnity 25 (six people): Michael Masucci, CJ Sturckow, Beth Moses, Luke Mays, Jamila Gilbert and Christopher Huie.

Shenzhou 15 (three people): Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu.

Expedition 69 (seven people): U.S. astronauts Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg; Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Andrey Fedyaev; and Sultan AlNeyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Axiom Space Ax-2 (four people): Peggy Whitson, John Stoffner, Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi.

The previous record for the most people in space at once was set during Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-19 suborbital flight on Dec. 11, 2021, when there were briefly 19 people off Earth.

Since 2000, there has been a continuous presence of humans in space, dating back to the first crew to take up residency on the International Space Station. 

China completed assembly of its three-module Tiangong space station late last year. The Shenzhou 16 crew is the station's fifth contingent since 2021.

Source: www.space.com

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