The One More Orbit team flies over the world in 46 hours and breaks the world record



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An international crew broke a world record after traveling the world in 46 hours, 39 minutes and 38 seconds.

The crew, collectively known as "One More Orbit", flew over the north and south poles from Tuesday to Thursday this week.

The team, which flew an ultra-long-range jet from Qatar Gulfstream G650ER, managed to break the world record of 5 hours, 51 minutes and 26 seconds, according to its website.

The flight of One More Orbit has broken two previous records. Captain Walter Mullikin set the first time, the fastest time to travel the world, in 1977, and Captain Aziz Ojjeh in 2008, for the fastest average speed.

The total route traveled about 22,328 nautical miles (41,351 km), said Captain Hamish Harding, mission director and one of the pilots.

The average speed was about 535 mph, according to calculations by the Associated Press.

A picture of the landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.
San Diego Museum of Air and Space Archives

The pilots attempted the plane to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first landing on the Apollo 11 moon on July 20, 1969, during which humans traveled to the moon for the first time.

The mission began and ended at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida – exactly where the Apollo 11 team took off almost 50 years ago.

Tuesday's mission also began at 9:32 am EDT – exactly the same time as Apollo 11, said One More Orbit.

Read more: NASA's Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon 50 years ago. Here are each Apollo historical mission explained.

An aerial view of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA Kennedy / Flickr

The group consisted of three mission directors and six members of the Qatar management team. The captain of the mission, Captain Hamish Harding, and three other crew members served as pilots.

The entire flight was composed of nationals from the United Kingdom, United States, Russia, Germany, Denmark, South Africa, Ukraine and Poland. , according to the site of the team.

Terry Virts, former commander of the International Space Station (ISS) and his former teammate, Russia, Gennady Padalka, served as mission directors and also witnessed the flight.

Former NASA astronaut Terry Virts in Calverton, NY, in June 2017.
Amy Sussman / AP Images for Luminati Aerospace

& # 39; NASCAR intense pit-stop & # 39;

As the trip was so long, the team had to refuel three times, in Kazakhstan, Mauritius and Chile, said Harding.

Harding had stated before the flight that the team would be doing refueling tests of about 30 minutes each.

The American Virts described the refueling stoppage of "very intense" refueling in NASCAR "after the flight, reported AP Padalka, the Russian, left after the second fuel stop.

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