Reaching for the Stars: Highest Humans in Orbit beyond Apollo

The crew of Apollo 13. Due to the problems they encountered with their craft on the outbound journey, they couldn’t possibly land on the moon, but conducted a slingshot around the moon to set them on return path that took them slightly further than the other Apollo missions that entered lunar orbit. After that is Apollo 10, a test mission that entered Lunar orbit but didn’t land.

If we exclude all the Apollo missions, it is Gemini 11, way back in 1966, that reached 1,369km, the highest earth orbit achieved. There has simply been no need to go higher, but preparations for new lunar and Mars manned exploration means that record will likely fall within the next decade or so.

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Responses from Others

Warren Olmsted

The contenders for the human altitude record (distance from Earth’s surface) are the nine Apollo missions which went to the moon, which are the only times humans have left Earth orbit: Apollo 8 and 10–17. All landed except 8 and 10 (because the mission did not call for it) and 13 (due to accident).

Of those, the record holder is Apollo 13 and astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert, with a maximum distance from Earth of 400,046 km (248,577 miles). There are two reasons for this.

All of the other missions entered lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km. Apollo 13 did not, it slingshotted around the moon in a “free return” trajectory which did not require any fuel burn, and the proper altitude for this maneuver was about 250 km.
More importantly though, like the Earth the Moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular, and is not even a perfect ellipse from one month to the next. Its distance from the center of the Earth varies very roughly from about 360,000 km at perigee to about 405,000 km at apogee. We can eliminate all but four of the missions which were near the moon very close to lunar apogee, and Apollo 13 was there almost precisely at apogee in April 1970.

The top 4:

Apollo 13 – 400,046 km
Apollo 10 – 399,806 km
Apollo 15 – 398,402 km
Apollo 16 – 398,009 km

The non-lunar mission record holder is Gemini 11 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon) in September 1966, at 1,373 km (853 miles).

Trausti Thor Johannsson

Hunter S Thompson. It is hard to say that anyone has been higher than him, ever.

Apollo 13 probably comes close to being the object with humans aboard that has gone the furthest from earth as they went past the moon and slingshotted back.

I don’t know if anyone else has gone that far. But how close the moon was and such, I don’t know. Another candidate would be Michael Collins

He stayed up in the control module while Buzz and Neil walked on the moon. That would have needed him to be quite far away.

But I would still think the crew of Apollo 13 travelled the furthest into space.

L VL

Gemini 11 holds the record for highest earth orbit. It was the ninth mission of NASA’s project Gemini, which flew in September 1966. It was only the 25th spaceflight to that time. Astronauts Charles Conrad Jr. and Richard Gordon Jr. reached an altitude of 1,373 km.

It is no surprise that this records stems from the early days of manned space flight. Apart from the Apollo project, studying the earth has been the main objective and it is easier and cheaper to study earth from nearby.

For comparison: The ISS orbits at an altitude of 408 km. Maximum orbit of the Space Shuttle was 643 kilometers The Apollo missions reached a distance of 400,171 km. The unmanned Voyager probes have reached a distance of 24,348,076,591 km.

Furious Nukefrost

Since no humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo missions in the early 1970s, the answer to who has been highest in orbit is all about who has spent the most time aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

There are two main records to consider:

Longest single spaceflight: This record is held by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who completed a 371-day mission on the ISS in September 2023.
Most cumulative days in space: This record belongs to Peggy Whitson, who has spent a total of 665 days in space across multiple missions, including a recent stint with Axiom Space in 2023.

So, depending on how you define “highest,” the answer is either Frank Rubio or Peggy Whitson. Both hold records for time spent orbiting Earth aboard the ISS.

David Miller

Apollo 8 was the first ever mission to go beyond a low earth orbit. It went around the moon and orbited it but was NOT a moon landing mission.

Apollo 10 did likewise, circling the moon but not landing. Apollo 13 was intended to land on the moon, but due to mechanical problems returned to Earth instead. The nominal distance of these is 238,900 miles “up” from Earth.

One man has traveled further, but he’s not a living man. That is “Starman,” the suited dummy sitting at the wheel of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster which was released into space during one of their demonstration cargo missions. Nine months after launch, the Tesla had travelled beyond the orbit of Mars, at a distance of 248,892,559 km (1.664 au) from the Sun. It became the fastest car EVER, as the speed of the car relative to the Sun reached approximately 121,000 km/h (75,000 mph) at perihelion.