How many of the people who have flown in space are divorced, how does that compare with the number who are married, and what does “divorced” actually mean in a count like this? The newest count we found is a 2020 study in Acta Astronautica by Smith, Kelley and Basner, built from the SPACEFACTS online database of human spaceflights.
The worldwide answer
Of 562 people worldwide who had flown in space as of early 2020, 20 were listed as divorced: 3.6%, or about 1 in 28 (our arithmetic). The count covers every space agency, not only NASA.
Most were listed as married
| Listed marital status, as of early 2020 | People | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Married | 513 | 91.3% |
| Unmarried | 25 | 4.4% |
| Divorced | 20 | 3.6% |
Status was not available for 4 people (0.7%).
Put another way, the database lists “married” about 26 times as often as “divorced” (our arithmetic). Counted by flights instead of people, 34 of 1,268 person flights (2.7%) were flown by someone listed as divorced. The study also groups the married and the divorced together as “ever married”: 533 of the 562, or 94.8% (our arithmetic).
Who is in the count
The study counts people who reached orbit above the Kármán line, 100 km up, so suborbital flights are left out, as are people who trained but never flew. Its data run to the launch of Soyuz MS-15 on September 25, 2019 and the landing of Soyuz MS-13 on February 6, 2020, so anyone who first flew after that, including on later commercial flights, is not in it. Of the 562, 349 (62.1%) flew with NASA, but the study gives no marital count by country or agency, so these figures are not a US share. A note on method: the study’s introduction gives 563 people, while its results and Table 1 give 562; this page uses Table 1, including its 1,268 person flights. For more on spaceflight itself, see Space: Still the Final Frontier.
What “divorced” means here
The study recorded one marital status per person, from three options: unmarried, married or divorced. It does not say when each status was recorded, so the 20 is a count of people listed as divorced, not a lifetime divorce rate. The study also does not examine whether spaceflight affects marriage.
The short version
As of early 2020, 20 of the 562 people worldwide who had flown in space were listed as divorced, about 1 in 28 (our arithmetic), and 513 were listed as married.
Last checked: 2026-10-22, against Smith, Kelley and Basner’s 2020 Acta Astronautica study of astronaut demographics. This article was machine-checked against the sources above and has not been expert-reviewed. Spotted an error or a newer public figure? Please tell us on our contact page with the article link and we will review it.
Sources
- S1 Smith MG, Kelley M, Basner M. A brief history of spaceflight from 1961 to 2020: An analysis of missions and astronaut demographics. Acta Astronautica 2020;175:290 to 299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2020.06.004 (open access at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7422727/ ). Accessed Oct 22, 2026. Data: SPACEFACTS online database (Becker J, cited by the study April 28, 2020).