Blue Origin’s New Shepard liftoff from West Texas with former National Football League (NFL) player and TV celebrity Michael Strahan on Saturday will cap off a record year for human spaceflight. In 1985, NASA flew the space shuttle nine times, raising hopes of an era that would see private citizens joining professional astronauts in orbit, until the January 1986 Challenger disaster that killed seven crew members including teacher Christa McAuliffe on board. Thirty five years after that tragedy, private companies SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic and the space agencies of Russia and China have taken a wide array of civilian passengers into space this year.

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Records and firsts that have followed as a result include the oldest and youngest people to go to space, the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk, the first space flight entirely comprising private citizens, and even the first feature film to be made in space, reports The Washington Post.

On Wednesday morning, a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from the Baikonur launch center in Kazakhstan carrying a Russian cosmonaut, Alexander Misurkin, and a pair of civilian passengers, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano, in the eighth private-citizen trip to the space station arranged by Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company, which works with the Russian space agency.

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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will ferry six tourists to space from its West Texas launch site, the company’s third human spaceflight this year, and overall the 13th human spaceflight of the year, two more than in 1985, when NASA carried out those nine shuttle flights, and the Russian Soyuz vehicle carried astronauts on two launches.

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Virgin Galactic also flew two human space flights this year, including one with its founder, Richard Branson.

And Elon Musk’s SpaceX in September launched four private citizens besides two crews of professional astronauts from NASA and other countries’ space agencies.

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China flew two crewed missions this year, compared to Russia’s three, including the flight this week.

Wayne Hale, a former NASA flight director and the space shuttle program manager, sounded a note of caution. While 1985 was a very busy year, he said on Twitter, “1986 was expected to be busier. But we pushed too hard and had disaster. Let’s hope 2022 stays safe no matter how busy it becomes.”