Currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule named Resilience has been in space for more than 84 days, longer than any other American spacecraft.
In the early 1970s, an Apollo command module had spent 84 days, one hour and sixteen minutes in space as part of the Skylab 4 mission, the third and last manned mission to Skylab, the first American space station. So it had been longer than any other American ship up to that point. However, this record has just been beaten this Sunday, February 7 by the Crew-1 mission from SpaceX and its "Resilience" capsule.
The spacecraft distinguished itself last November by carrying NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, accompanied by Soichi Noguchi, astronaut at JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), to the ISS. Since then, it has always been docked at the station.
Note that this record is only for US ships . The longest flight time recorded by a crewed spacecraft to date is 215 days, 8 hours and 22 minutes , set by the Russian Soyuz TMA-09 capsule in 2007.
For the occasion, the four astronauts spoke this Sunday with the pilot of Skylab 4, Ed Gibson, 47 years after his incredible mission. The other two crew members present at the time, Jerry Carr and Bill Pogue, sadly passed away.
For Gibson, those 84 days ending February 8, 1974 were more than just a record for his ship. At that time, it was also the longest mission operated by an American astronaut in space. This record was finally broken on June 6, 1995 by astronaut Norm Thagard who spent about 115 days aboard the old Russian space station Mir (this mission involved the launches of two different spacecraft).
Since then, American astronauts have been recording longer and longer stays in space. Scott Kelly, the former NASA astronaut, holds the current American record for a single spaceflight set at 340 days in March 2016 .
As for SpaceX's "Resilience" capsule, it is expected to return Crew-1 astronauts to Earth in late March, after approximately 160 flight days . On paper, the ship is designed to be stowed for up to 210 days at the station. The Crew-2 mission is then scheduled to launch in the spring to carry four members of Expeditions 64 and 65, including Frenchman Thomas Pesquet.
