A Look Back at our Most Transformative Year Yet
As we write this blog post, we are overcome with gratitude thinking about the last 12 months. Only in our wildest dreams did we imagine having the opportunity to touch so many lives and expand the public consciousness by exposing the masses to the potential impacts of space travel. While, as a team, we have always been incredibly passionate about space, it wasn’t until this year that we witnessed a turning point where so many others began believing both in the power of space to catalyze positive change, and that they too could have access to this life-altering experience. We are proud to be a small piece to that change, alongside so many brilliant people and organizations.
Before we dive into the details of all that we accomplished as a space community this last year, we have to say how encouraged we are as we look forward to 2023 and beyond. We’ve now seen the Overview Effect in Citizen Astronauts more than a dozen times and it’s never been more clear to our team, and to the rest of the world: space offers a perspective that no other human experience can convey. This perspective is vital to our future success on this planet – and we have never been more excited to see what the next year brings.
Human Spaceflight by the Numbers
32 people went to space in the first 8 months of 2022: 14 astronauts ventured into orbit and 18 flew on suborbital flights.
Blue Origin sent 18 people into suborbital space aboard the company’s New Shepard spacecraft. The company has now launched 32 people into space.
Space For Humanity (S4H) sponsored 2 Citizen Astronauts (CA) to space aboard New Shepard.
Katya Echazarreta (CA-1) becomes the first Mexican-born woman to visit space on NS-21.
Sara Sabry (CA-2) becomes the first Egyptian and African woman to visit space on NS-22.
Axiom Space completed the first fully private crewed flight to the space station.
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 sends the world's first all-civilian mission to orbit.
In addition to the milestones marked in human spaceflight this year, there were remarkable achievements in space technology and research as well. Some of the most inspiring images in existence were delivered from the James Webb Space Telescope taking us back in time 13.7 billion years as it searches for clues to what happened right after the Big Bang.
Another almost too crazy to believe feat of technological innovation: NASA’s DART mission successfully crashed a prototype probe into an asteroid to change its course – proving that similar missions could protect us from future asteroids threatening collision with Earth.
And then there was Artemis, a mission so remarkable and so rare, that it could irrevocably change the trajectory of spaceflight and space exploration for many generations to come. The success of Artemis demonstrated that NASA is poised to send humans to deep space aka the Moon and maybe one day Mars. The Artemis mission also reminded the world that space is hard, but it’s worth it.
It’s clearer now, more than ever that we are at an inflection point in human history. Access to space is growing, and with that growth we continue to see more diversity and more representation than we have seen before; however, we still have a lot of work to do. We remain committed to our mission to expand access to space for all of humanity and can’t wait to send many, many more people to space.
Happy holidays and see you next year!
The Space for Humanity Team
Watch Our Year in Our Video Recap of 2022
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