Commercial spaceflight participants now span ages 18 to 90 and represent 24 nations, with some launches following selection by months rather than years, while NASA’s comparison cohort followed a narrower education and career path
Commercial spaceflight participants are starting to look very different from the astronauts many readers picture first. A 2026 comparison in npj Microgravity found that private missions have already stretched the observed participant age range from late teens to 90 years old, while also bringing in people whose schooling, jobs and national backgrounds are much less…
