Space begins in two different places. For the United States Air Force it’s 50 miles high (264,000 feet). Test pilots who flew the X-15 rocketplane beyond this altitude were awarded Astronaut Wings by the Air Force. For the rest of the world, though, space begins a little higher at 62½ miles (330,000 feet). This point is also known as the Karman Line. Beyond it you’re in space, whoever’s asking. But you’re not necessarily in orbit. That requires you to go a little higher and a lot faster. To maintain an orbit 200 miles (around 1 million feet) above Earth, the Space Shuttle needs to be traveling at about 17,500 mph. The Shuttle twice reached that altitude to service the Hubble telescope. And even that’s less than half NASA’s most distant orbit, achieved in 1966 when the crew of Gemini XI reached a height of 850 miles (around 4.5 million feet). No one’s flown further from Earth than that without continuing to the moon.
