280 people from 23 countries - this is the number of lucky people who visited the International Space Station. Analysis of data from “Roscosmos” and NASA showed that the leaders in the number of flights to the ISS are citizens of the United States, Russia and Japan. RIA Novosti reports this.
167 Americans have boarded the space station. Among them, the record holder is astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who completed 5 flights. His colleagues flew to the ISS 4 times: Stephen Bowen, Mark Kelly, Richard Mastracchio, Frederick Sterkow, Peggy Whitson and Jeffrey Williams.
Russia is in second place in terms of the number of its citizens on the ISS.According to “Roscosmos”, as of November 2023, the station was visited by 59 Russians, and in March 2024 they were joined by another, cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who arrived on the SpaceX Crew-8 spacecraft.
Thus, the total number of Russians on the ISS reached 60.Among them, 3 cosmonauts - Yuri Malenchenko, Fedor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kononenko - visited the station 5 times.
Japan closes the top three, having sent 11 of its citizens to the ISS. The top five also included Canada (9 people) and Italy (6 people). 4 representatives each flew to the ISS from France and Germany.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Sweden sent two people each to the station.
The ISS was visited once each by citizens of Brazil, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Israel, South Africa, Türkiye, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and Denmark.