FAI Astronautic Records Commission (ICARE)

On 18 March 1965, during the Voskhod 2 mission, Alexei Leonov exited his spacecraft (tethered by a long cord) to experience floating in space, thus making the history books for the first ever spacewalk. His courageous accomplishment has had a colossal impact on human space exploration.

The achievement was ratified by FAI as an Astronautics Absolute World Record for Extravehicular Duration in Space: 12 minutes and 9 seconds.

The FAI Astronautic Records Commission (ICARE) has released a new logo design. The Commission was originally founded in 1960 to appraise and ratify human spaceflight records, and with this new logo, the bureau aims to encapsulate a new era in space exploration.

Dressed in a spacesuit and wearing a large backpack, the astronaut floats gently upwards, light as a snowflake against the dark sky. As he floats, he gradually increases the centimetres, the metres, between his body - in its protective support system - and the Challenger space shuttle from which he emerged.

This is the American astronaut Bruce McCandless II. It is 7 February 1984 and he is making the first untethered spacewalk using NASA’s Manned Manuoeuvring Unit or MMU, a project his team has been working on since 1966.

FAI Astronautics Commission (ICARE) has awarded the FAI Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal to NASA’s Robert Behnken (left, above image) and Douglas Hurley (right) for their exceptional performance as flight crew during the SpaceX Demonstration Mission-2 (DM-2). 

The pair are long-term friends and colleagues – both former military pilots who were recruited together by NASA in 2000 – and are known as Bob and Doug by their many followers online.

In September 2021, these four people were the first ever to make an all-civilian spaceflight. The spaceflight referred to as Inspiration4 was operated by SpaceX and lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s historic Launchpad 39A on 16 September 2021 at 00:02:56 UTC. Aboard were Mr. Jared Isaacman, Commander, Dr. Sian Proctor, Pilot, Ms. Hayley Arceneaux, Mission Specialist, and Mr. Chris Sembroski, Mission Specialist (pictured whilst in orbit, above) who completed a three-day mission, splashing down in the Atlantic on 18 September 2021 at 23:06:49 UTC.