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, 552 people from 36 countries have reached or more in altitude, of whom 549 reached low Earth orbit or beyond. |
Of these, 24 people have traveled beyond low Earth orbit, either to lunar orbit, the lunar surface, or, in one case, a loop around the Moon. Three of the 24—Jim Lovell, John Young and Eugene Cernan—did so twice. |
, under the U.S. definition, 558 people qualify as having reached space, above altitude. Of eight X-15 pilots who exceeded in altitude, only one, Joseph A. Walker, exceeded 100 kilometers (about 62.1 miles) and he did it two times, becoming the first person in space twice. Space travelers have spent over 41,790 man-d... |
Terminology |
In 1959, when both the United States and Soviet Union were planning, but had yet to launch humans into space, NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan and his Deputy Administrator, Hugh Dryden, discussed whether spacecraft crew members should be called astronauts or cosmonauts. Dryden preferred "cosmonaut", on the grounds t... |
Astronaut |
A professional space traveler is called an astronaut. The first known use of the term "astronaut" in the modern sense was by Neil R. Jones in his 1930 short story "The Death's Head Meteor". The word itself had been known earlier; for example, in Percy Greg's 1880 book Across the Zodiac, "astronaut" referred to a spacec... |
The first known formal use of the term astronautics in the scientific community was the establishment of the annual International Astronautical Congress in 1950, and the subsequent founding of the International Astronautical Federation the following year. |
NASA applies the term astronaut to any crew member aboard NASA spacecraft bound for Earth orbit or beyond. NASA also uses the term as a title for those selected to join its Astronaut Corps. The European Space Agency similarly uses the term astronaut for members of its Astronaut Corps. |
Cosmonaut |
By convention, an astronaut employed by the Russian Federal Space Agency (or its Soviet predecessor) is called a cosmonaut in English texts. The word is an Anglicization of kosmonavt ( ). Other countries of the former Eastern Bloc use variations of the Russian kosmonavt, such as the (although Polish also uses , and th... |
Coinage of the term has been credited to Soviet aeronautics (or "cosmonautics") pioneer Mikhail Tikhonravov (1900–1974). The first cosmonaut was Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin, also the first person in space. He was part of the first six Russians, with German Titov, Yevgeny Khrunov, Andriyan Nikolayev, Pavel Popo... |
Taikonaut |
In Chinese, the term (, "cosmos navigating personnel") is used for astronauts and cosmonauts in general, while (, "navigating celestial-heaven personnel") is used for Chinese astronauts. Here, (, literally "heaven-navigating", or spaceflight) is strictly defined as the navigation of outer space within the local star... |
The term taikonaut is used by some English-language news media organizations for professional space travelers from China. The word has featured in the Longman and Oxford English dictionaries, and the term became more common in 2003 when China sent its first astronaut Yang Liwei into space aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecra... |
Parastronaut |
For its 2022 Astronaut Group, ESA envisions recruiting an astronaut with a physical disability, a category they called "parastronauts", with the intention but not guarantee of spaceflight. The categories of disability considered for the program were individuals with lower limb deficiency (either through amputation or c... |
Other terms |
With the rise of space tourism, NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency agreed to use the term "spaceflight participant" to distinguish those space travelers from professional astronauts on missions coordinated by those two agencies. |
While no nation other than Russia (and previously the Soviet Union), the United States, and China have launched a crewed spacecraft, several other nations have sent people into space in cooperation with one of these countries, e.g. the Soviet-led Interkosmos program. Inspired partly by these missions, other synonyms fo... |
As of 2021 in the United States, astronaut status is conferred on a person depending on the authorizing agency: |
one who flies in a vehicle above for NASA or the military is considered an astronaut (with no qualifier) |
one who flies in a vehicle to the International Space Station in a mission coordinated by NASA and Roscosmos is a spaceflight participant |
one who flies above in a non-NASA vehicle as a crewmember and demonstrates activities during flight that are essential to public safety, or contribute to human space flight safety, is considered a commercial astronaut by the Federal Aviation Administration |
one who flies to the International Space Station as part of a "privately funded, dedicated commercial spaceflight on a commercial launch vehicle dedicated to the mission ... to conduct approved commercial and marketing activities on the space station (or in a commercial segment attached to the station)" is considered ... |
a generally-accepted but unofficial term for a paying non-crew passenger who flies a private non-NASA or military vehicles above is a space tourist (as of 2020, nobody has yet qualified for this status) |
On July 20, 2021, the FAA issued an order redefining the eligibility criteria to be an astronaut in response to the private suborbital spaceflights of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. The new criteria states that one must have "[d]emonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed ... |
human space flight safety" in order to qualify as an astronaut. This new definition excludes Bezos and Branson. |
Space travel milestones |
The first human in space was Soviet Yuri Gagarin, who was launched on 12 April 1961, aboard Vostok 1 and orbited around the Earth for 108 minutes. The first woman in space was Soviet Valentina Tereshkova, who launched on 16 June 1963, aboard Vostok 6 and orbited Earth for almost three days. |
Alan Shepard became the first American and second person in space on 5 May 1961, on a 15-minute sub-orbital flight aboard Freedom 7. The first American to orbit the Earth was John Glenn, aboard Friendship 7 on 20 February 1962. The first American woman in space was Sally Ride, during Space Shuttle Challenger's mission ... |
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was the first person to conduct an extravehicular activity (EVA), (commonly called a "spacewalk"), on 18 March 1965, on the Soviet Union's Voskhod 2 mission. This was followed two and a half months later by astronaut Ed White who made the first American EVA on NASA's Gemini 4 mission. |
The first crewed mission to orbit the Moon, Apollo 8, included American William Anders who was born in Hong Kong, making him the first Asian-born astronaut in 1968. |
The Soviet Union, through its Intercosmos program, allowed people from other "socialist" (i.e. Warsaw Pact and other Soviet-allied) countries to fly on its missions, with the notable exceptions of France and Austria participating in Soyuz TM-7 and Soyuz TM-13, respectively. An example is Czechoslovak Vladimír Remek, th... |
On 23 July 1980, Pham Tuan of Vietnam became the first Asian in space when he flew aboard Soyuz 37. Also in 1980, Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez became the first person of Hispanic and black African descent to fly in space, and in 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African American to fly into space. In April 1985, Tayl... |
With the increase of seats on the Space Shuttle, the U.S. began taking international astronauts. In 1983, Ulf Merbold of West Germany became the first non-US citizen to fly in a US spacecraft. In 1984, Marc Garneau became the first of eight Canadian astronauts to fly in space (through 2010). |
In 1985, Rodolfo Neri Vela became the first Mexican-born person in space. In 1991, Helen Sharman became the first Briton to fly in space. |
In 2002, Mark Shuttleworth became the first citizen of an African country to fly in space, as a paying spaceflight participant. In 2003, Ilan Ramon became the first Israeli to fly in space, although he died during a re-entry accident. |
On 15 October 2003, Yang Liwei became China's first astronaut on the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft. |
On 30 May 2020, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken became the first astronauts to launch on a private crewed spacecraft, Crew Dragon. |
Age milestones |
The youngest person to reach space is Oliver Daemen, who was 18 years and 11 months old when he made a suborbital spaceflight lasting 7 minutes on July 20, 2021. Daemen, who was a commercial passenger aboard the New Shepard, broke the record of Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who was 25 years old when he flew Vostok 2.... |
On the same flight as Daemen was 82 year, 6-month-old Wally Funk, one of the women dubbed the Mercury 13, and now the oldest person in space. She is the first of the Mercury 13 to reach space, although the group was trained concurrently with the all-male Mercury 7, who would all engage in space travel. The oldest perso... |
Duration and distance milestones |
438 days is the longest time spent in space, by Russian Valeri Polyakov. |
As of 2006, the most spaceflights by an individual astronaut is seven, a record held by both Jerry L. Ross and Franklin Chang-Diaz. The farthest distance from Earth an astronaut has traveled was , when Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise went around the Moon during the Apollo 13 emergency. |
Civilian and non-government milestones |
The first civilian in space was Valentina Tereshkova aboard Vostok 6 (she also became the first woman in space on that mission). |
Tereshkova was only honorarily inducted into the USSR's Air Force, which did not accept female pilots at that time. A month later, Joseph Albert Walker became the first American civilian in space when his X-15 Flight 90 crossed the line, qualifying him by the international definition of spaceflight. Walker had joined ... |
The first people in space who had never been a member of any country's armed forces were both Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov aboard Voskhod 1. |
The first non-governmental space traveler was Byron K. Lichtenberg, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who flew on STS-9 in 1983. In December 1990, Toyohiro Akiyama became the first paying space traveler and the first journalist in space for Tokyo Broadcasting System, a visit to Mir as part of ... |
The first self-funded space tourist was Dennis Tito on board the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-3 on 28 April 2001. |
Self-funded travelers |
The first person to fly on an entirely privately funded mission was Mike Melvill, piloting SpaceShipOne flight 15P on a suborbital journey, although he was a test pilot employed by Scaled Composites and not an actual paying space tourist. Seven others have paid the Russian Space Agency to fly into space: |
Dennis Tito (American): 28 April – 6 May 2001 (ISS) |
Mark Shuttleworth (South African): 25 April – 5 May 2002 (ISS) |
Gregory Olsen (American): 1–11 October 2005 (ISS) |
Anousheh Ansari (Iranian / American): 18–29 September 2006 (ISS) |
Charles Simonyi (Hungarian / American): 7–21 April 2007 (ISS), 26 March – 8 April 2009 (ISS) |
Richard Garriott (British / American): 12–24 October 2008 (ISS) |
Guy Laliberté (Canadian): 30 September 2009 – 11 October 2009 (ISS) |
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