At precisely 8:42:47 p.m. EST tonight (Sunday, 7 February), a new record will be set in the annals of U.S. human spaceflight, when Dragon Resilience—the vehicle which delivered Crew-1 astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station (ISS), last November—passes 84 days, one hour, 15 minutes and 30 seconds in flight.

Video Credit: NASA
In doing so, the hardy little SpaceX ship will eclipse Skylab 4’s almost-five-decade-old achievement for the longest single mission by an American crewed orbital spacecraft. Current plans call for Dragon Resilience and her four-member crew to return to Earth in late April or early May, targeting a record-setting duration for a U.S. piloted vehicle of around 165 days in space.

When the Skylab 4 mission launched atop a Saturn IB rocket from historic Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida at 10:01:23 a.m. EST on 16 November 1973, its three-man crew knew they were aiming for one of the longest orbital voyages ever attempted at that time. Two previous flights to America’s Skylab space station had recorded 28 and 59 days aloft, respectively, whilst the Soviet Union had achieved 23 days with its ill-fated Soyuz 11 crew.