11. What is the shortest amount of time anyone has been in space? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

The shortest journey into space is a sub-orbital hop where a spacecraft goes up and down in an arc trajectory, like a ball flying through the air (this when the rocket is not powerful enough to reach orbit). The first sub-orbital hop was by astronaut Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard on May 5, 1961. His sub-orbital mission lasted 15 minutes, with only a few minutes in space. In the present day there are a number of people who have completed sub-orbital hops, including the SpaceShipOne pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie. The shortest duration flight for someone reaching orbit was the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. He completed just one orbit in 89 minutes.

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Answer provided by Hazel McAndrews

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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