Human spaceflight
Human spaceflight is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be remotely operated from ground stations on Earth, or autonomously, without any direct human involvement. People trained for spaceflight are called astronauts, cosmonauts, or taikonauts ; and non-professionals are referred to as spaceflight participants or spacefarers.
The first human in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who launched as part of the Soviet Union's Vostok program on 12 April 1961 at the beginning of the Space Race. On 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, as part of Project Mercury. Humans traveled to the Moon nine times between 1968 and 1972 as part of the United States' Apollo program, and have had a continuous presence in space for on the International Space Station. On 15 October 2003, the first Chinese taikonaut, Yang Liwei, went to space as part of Shenzhou 5, the first Chinese human spaceflight. As of December 2025, humans have not traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 lunar mission in December 1972.
Currently, the United States, Russia, and China are the only countries with public or commercial human spaceflight-capable programs. List of [private spaceflight companies|Non-governmental spaceflight companies] have been working to develop human space programs of their own, e.g. for space tourism or commercial in-space research. The first private human spaceflight launch was a suborbital flight on SpaceShipOne on June 21, 2004. The first commercial orbital crew launch was by SpaceX in May 2020, transporting NASA astronauts to the ISS under United States government contract.
History
Cold War era
Human spaceflight capability was first developed during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. These nations developed intercontinental ballistic missiles for the delivery of nuclear weapons, producing rockets large enough to be adapted to carry the first artificial satellites into low Earth orbit.After the first satellites were launched in 1957 and 1958 by the Soviet Union, the US began work on Project Mercury, with the aim of launching men into orbit. The USSR was secretly pursuing the Vostok program to accomplish the same thing, and launched the first human into space, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. On 12 April 1961, Gagarin was launched aboard Vostok 1 on a Vostok 3KA rocket and completed a single orbit. On 5 May 1961, the US launched its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7 on a Mercury-Redstone rocket. Unlike Gagarin, Shepard manually controlled his spacecraft's attitude. On 20 February 1962, John Glenn became the first American in orbit, aboard Friendship 7 on a Mercury-Atlas rocket. The USSR launched five more cosmonauts in Vostok capsules, including the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. Through 1963, the US launched a total of two astronauts in suborbital flights and four into orbit. The US also made two North American X-15 flights, that exceeded the Kármán line, the altitude used by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale to denote the edge of space.
In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy raised the stakes of the Space Race by setting the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s. That same year, the US began the Apollo program of launching three-man capsules atop the Saturn family of launch vehicles. In 1962, the US began Project Gemini, which flew 10 missions with two-man crews launched by Titan II rockets in 1965 and 1966. Gemini's objective was to support Apollo by developing American orbital spaceflight experience and techniques to be used during the Moon mission.
Meanwhile, the USSR remained silent about their intentions to send humans to the Moon and proceeded to stretch the limits of their single-pilot Vostok capsule by adapting it to a two or three-person Voskhod capsule to compete with Gemini. They were able to launch two orbital flights in 1964 and 1965 and achieved the first spacewalk, performed by Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2, on 8 March 1965. However, the Voskhod did not have Gemini's capability to maneuver in orbit, and the program was terminated. The US Gemini flights did not achieve the first spacewalk, but overcame the early Soviet lead by performing several spacewalks, solving the problem of astronaut fatigue caused by compensating for the lack of gravity, demonstrating the ability of humans to endure two weeks in space, and performing the first space rendezvous and docking of spacecraft.
The US succeeded in developing the Saturn V rocket necessary to send the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, and sent Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders into 10 orbits around the Moon in Apollo 8 in December 1968. In 1969, Apollo 11 accomplished Kennedy's goal by landing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon on 21 July and returning them safely on 24 July, along with Command Module pilot Michael Collins. Through 1972, a total of six Apollo missions landed 12 men to walk on the Moon, half of which drove electric powered vehicles on the surface. The crew of Apollo 13—Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise—survived an in-flight spacecraft failure, they flew by the Moon without landing, and returned safely to Earth.
During this time, the USSR secretly pursued crewed lunar orbiting and landing programs. They successfully developed the three-person Soyuz spacecraft for use in the lunar programs, but failed to develop the N1 rocket necessary for a human landing, and discontinued their lunar programs in 1974. Upon losing the Moon race they concentrated on the development of space stations, using the Soyuz as a ferry to take cosmonauts to and from the stations. They started with a series of Salyut sortie stations from 1971 to 1986.
Post-Apollo era
In 1969, Nixon appointed his vice president, Spiro Agnew, to head a Space Task Group to recommend follow-on human spaceflight programs after Apollo. The group proposed an ambitious Space Transportation System based on a reusable Space Shuttle, which consisted of a winged, internally fueled orbiter stage burning liquid hydrogen, launched with a similar, but larger kerosene-fueled booster stage, each equipped with airbreathing jet engines for powered return to a runway at the Kennedy Space Center launch site. Other components of the system included a permanent, modular space station; reusable space tug; and nuclear interplanetary ferry, leading to a human expedition to Mars as early as 1986 or as late as 2000, depending on the level of funding allocated. However, Nixon knew the American political climate would not support congressional funding for such an ambition, and killed proposals for all but the Shuttle, possibly to be followed by the space station. Plans for the Shuttle were scaled back to reduce development risk, cost, and time, replacing the piloted fly-back booster with two reusable solid rocket boosters, and the smaller orbiter would use an expendable external propellant tank to feed its hydrogen-fueled main engines. The orbiter would have to make unpowered landings.In 1973, the US launched the Skylab sortie space station and inhabited it for 171 days with three crews ferried aboard an Apollo spacecraft. During that time, President Richard Nixon and Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev were negotiating an easing of Cold War tensions known as détente. During the détente, they negotiated the Apollo–Soyuz program, in which an Apollo spacecraft carrying a special docking adapter module would rendezvous and dock with Soyuz 19 in 1975. The American and Soviet crews shook hands in space, but the purpose of the flight was purely symbolic.
The two nations continued to compete rather than cooperate in space, as the US turned to developing the Space Shuttle and planning the space station, which was dubbed Freedom. The USSR launched three Almaz military sortie stations from 1973 to 1977, disguised as Salyuts. They followed Salyut with the development of Mir, the first modular, semi-permanent space station, the construction of which took place from 1986 to 1996. Mir orbited at an altitude of, at an orbital inclination of 51.6°. It was occupied for 4,592 days and made a controlled reentry in 2001.
The Space Shuttle started flying in 1981, but the US Congress failed to approve sufficient funds to make Space Station Freedom a reality. A fleet of four shuttles was built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. A fifth shuttle, Endeavour, was built to replace Challenger, which was destroyed in an accident during launch that killed 7 astronauts on 28 January 1986. From 1983 to 1998, twenty-two Shuttle flights carried components for a European Space Agency sortie space station called Spacelab in the Shuttle payload bay.
The USSR copied the US's reusable Space Shuttle orbiter, which they called Buran-class orbiter or simply Buran, which was designed to be launched into orbit by the expendable Energia rocket, and was capable of robotic orbital flight and landing. Unlike the Space Shuttle, Buran had no main rocket engines, but like the Space Shuttle orbiter, it used smaller rocket engines to perform its final orbital insertion. A single uncrewed orbital test flight took place in November 1988. A second test flight was planned by 1993, but the program was canceled due to lack of funding and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Two more orbiters were never completed, and the one that performed the uncrewed flight was destroyed in a hangar roof collapse in May 2002.
US / Russian cooperation
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought an end to the Cold War and opened the door to true cooperation between the US and Russia. The Soviet Soyuz and Mir programs were taken over by the Russian Federal Space Agency, which became known as the Roscosmos State Corporation. The Shuttle-Mir Program included American Space Shuttles visiting the Mir space station, Russian cosmonauts flying on the Shuttle, and an American astronaut flying aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for long-duration expeditions aboard Mir.In 1993, President Bill Clinton secured Russia's cooperation in converting the planned Space Station Freedom into the International Space Station. Construction of the station began in 1998. The station orbits at an altitude of and an orbital inclination of 51.65°. Several of the Space Shuttle's 135 orbital flights were to help assemble, supply, and crew the ISS. Russia has built half of the International Space Station and has continued its cooperation with the US.
China
China was the third nation in the world, after the USSR and US, to send humans into space. During the Space Race between the two superpowers, which culminated with Apollo 11 landing humans on the Moon, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai decided on 14 July 1967 that China should not be left behind, and initiated their own crewed space program: the top-secret Project 714, which aimed to put two people into space by 1973 with the Shuguang spacecraft. Nineteen PLAAF pilots were selected for this goal in March 1971. The Shuguang-1 spacecraft, to be launched with the CZ-2A rocket, was designed to carry a crew of two. The program was officially canceled on 13 May 1972 for economic reasons.In 1992, under China Manned Space Program, also known as "Project 921", authorization and funding was given for the first phase of a third, successful attempt at crewed spaceflight. To achieve independent human spaceflight capability, China developed the Shenzhou spacecraft and Long March 2F rocket dedicated to human spaceflight in the next few years, along with critical infrastructures like a new launch site and flight control center being built. The first uncrewed spacecraft, Shenzhou 1, was launched on 20 November 1999 and recovered the next day, marking the first step of the realization of China's human spaceflight capability. Three more uncrewed missions were conducted in the next few years in order to verify the key technologies. On 15 October 2003 Shenzhou 5, China's first crewed spaceflight mission, put Yang Liwei in orbit for 21 hours and returned safely back to Inner Mongolia, making China the third nation to launch a human into orbit independently.
The goal of the second phase of CMS was to make technology breakthroughs in extravehicular activities,space rendezvous, and docking to support short-term human activities in space. On 25 September 2008 during the flight of Shenzhou 7, Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming completed China's first EVA. In 2011, China launched the Tiangong 1 target spacecraft and Shenzhou 8 uncrewed spacecraft. The two spacecraft completed China's first automatic rendezvous and docking on 3 November 2011. About 9 months later, Tiangong 1 completed the first manual rendezvous and docking with Shenzhou 9, which carried China's first female astronaut Liu Yang.
In September 2016, Tiangong 2 was launched into orbit. It was a space laboratory with more advanced functions and equipment than Tiangong 1. A month later, Shenzhou 11 was launched and docked with Tiangong 2. Two astronauts entered Tiangong 2 and were stationed for about 30 days, verifying the viability of astronauts' medium-term stay in space. In April 2017, China's first cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou 1 docked with Tiangong 2 and completed multiple in-orbit propellant refueling tests, which marked the successful completion of the second phase of CMS.
The third phase of CMS began in 2020. The goal of this phase is to build China's own space station, Tiangong. The first module of Tiangong, the Tianhe core module, was launched into orbit by China's most powerful rocket Long March 5B on 29 April 2021. It was later visited by multiple cargo and crewed spacecraft and demonstrated China's capability of sustaining Chinese astronauts' long-term stay in space.
According to CMS announcement, all missions of Tiangong Space Station are scheduled to be carried out by the end of 2022. Once the construction is completed, Tiangong will enter the application and development phase, which is poised to last for no less than 10 years.
Abandoned programs of other nations
The European Space Agency began development of the Hermes shuttle spaceplane in 1987, to be launched on the Ariane 5 expendable launch vehicle. It was intended to dock with the European Columbus space station. The projects were canceled in 1992 when it became clear that neither cost nor performance goals could be achieved. No Hermes shuttles were ever built. The Columbus space station was reconfigured as the European module of the same name on the International Space Station.Japan began the development of the HOPE-X experimental shuttle spaceplane in the 1980s, to be launched on its H-IIA expendable launch vehicle. A string of failures in 1998 led to funding reductions, and the project's cancellation in 2003 in favor of participation in the International Space Station program through the Kibō Japanese Experiment Module and H-II Transfer Vehicle cargo spacecraft. As an alternative to HOPE-X, NASDA in 2001 proposed the Fuji crew capsule for independent or ISS flights, but the project did not proceed to the contracting stage.
From 1993 to 1997, the, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries worked on the proposed Kankoh-maru vertical-takeoff-and-landing single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch system. In 2005, this system was proposed for space tourism.
According to a press release from the Iraqi News Agency dated 5 December 1989, there was only one test of the Al-Abid space launcher, which Iraq intended to use to develop its own crewed space facilities by the end of the century. These plans were put to an end by the Gulf War of 1991 and the economic hardships that followed.
United States "Shuttle gap"
Under the George W. Bush administration, the Constellation program included plans for retiring the Space Shuttle program and replacing it with the capability for spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. In the 2011 United States federal budget, the Obama administration canceled Constellation for being over budget and behind schedule, while not innovating and investing in critical new technologies. As part of the Artemis program, NASA is developing the Orion spacecraft to be launched by the Space Launch System. Under the Commercial Crew Development plan, NASA relies on transportation services provided by the private sector to reach low Earth orbit, such as SpaceX Dragon 2, the Boeing Starliner or Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser. The period between the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first launch into space of SpaceShipTwo Flight VP-03 on 13 December 2018 is similar to the gap between the end of Apollo in 1975 and the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981, and is referred to by a presidential Blue Ribbon Committee as the U.S. human spaceflight gap.Commercial private spaceflight
Since the early 2000s, a variety of private spaceflight ventures have been undertaken. SpaceX and Boeing have launched humans to orbit, while Blue Origin has launched 8 crewed flights, six of which crossed the Kármán line. Virgin Galactic has launched crew to a height above on a suborbital trajectory. Several other companies, including Sierra Nevada and Copenhagen Suborbitals, have developed crewed spacecraft. SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic plan to fly commercial passengers in the emerging space tourism market.SpaceX has developed Crew Dragon flying on Falcon 9. It first launched astronauts to orbit and to the ISS in May 2020 as part of the Demo-2 mission. Developed as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development program, the capsule is also available for flights with other customers. A first tourist mission, Inspiration4, launched in September 2021.
Boeing developed the Starliner capsule as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development program, which is launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle. Starliner made an uncrewed flight in December 2019. A second uncrewed flight attempt was launched in May 2022. A crewed flight to fully certify Starliner was launched in June 2024. Similar to SpaceX, development funding has been provided by a mix of government and private funds.
Virgin Galactic is developing SpaceshipTwo, a commercial suborbital spacecraft aimed at the space tourism market. It reached space in December 2018.
Blue Origin is in a multi-year test program of their New Shepard vehicle and has carried out thirty one launches as of May 2025, including twenty uncrewed test flights and eleven crewed flights. The first crewed flight, carrying founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aviator Wally Funk, and 18-year old Oliver Daemen launched on July 20, 2021.
Passenger travel via spacecraft
Over the decades, a number of spacecraft have been proposed for spaceliner passenger travel. Somewhat analogous to travel by airliner after the middle of the 20th century, these vehicles are proposed to transport large numbers of passengers to destinations in space, or on Earth via suborbital spaceflights. To date, none of these concepts have been built, although a few vehicles that carry fewer than 10 persons are currently in the test flight phase of their development process.One large spaceliner concept currently in early development is the SpaceX Starship, which, in addition to replacing the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles in the legacy Earth-orbit market after 2020, has been proposed by SpaceX for long-distance commercial travel on Earth, flying 100+ people suborbitally between two points in under one hour, also known as "Earth-to-Earth".
Small spaceplane or small capsule suborbital spacecraft have been under development for the past decade or so; as of 2017, at least one of each type is under development. Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have craft in active development: the SpaceShipTwo spaceplane and the New Shepard capsule, respectively. Both would carry approximately a half-dozen passengers up to space for a brief time of zero gravity before returning to the launch location. XCOR Aerospace had been developing the Lynx single-passenger spaceplane since the 2000s, but development was halted in 2017.
Human representation and participation
Participation and representation of humanity in space has been an issue ever since the first phase of space exploration. Some rights of non-spacefaring countries have been secured through international space law, declaring space the "province of all mankind", though the sharing of space by all humanity is sometimes criticized as imperialist and lacking. In addition to the lack of international inclusion, the inclusion of women and people of color has also been lacking. To make spaceflight more inclusive, organizations such as the Justspace Alliance and IAU-featured Inclusive Astronomy have been formed in recent years.Women
The first woman to ever enter space was Valentina Tereshkova. She flew in 1963, but it was not until the 1980s that another woman entered space. At the time, all astronauts were required to be military test pilots; women were not able to enter this career, which is one reason for the delay in allowing women to join space crews. After the rules were changed, Svetlana Savitskaya became the second woman to enter space; she was also from the Soviet Union. Sally Ride became the next woman to enter space and the first woman to enter space through the United States program. Since then, eleven other countries have allowed women astronauts. The first all-female spacewalk occurred in 2018, by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. These two women had both participated in separate spacewalks with NASA. The first mission to the Moon with a woman aboard is planned for 2024.Despite these developments, women are still underrepresented among astronauts and especially cosmonauts. More than 600 people have flown in space but only 75 have been women. Issues that block potential applicants from the programs, and limit the space missions they are able to go on, are, for example:
- agencies limit women to half as much time in space as men, due to suppositions that women are at greater potential risk for cancer.
- a lack of space suits sized appropriately for female astronauts.
Milestones
By country
This is a list of major milestones achieved by country. Recorded is the first citizen and first spacecraft from each respective country to accomplish each milestone, regardless of mission type or intended outcome.| Country | Citizen to space | Crewed spaceflight launch | Citizen to land on moon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 By achievement; 12 April 1961; 17 July 1962 or 19 July 1963 ; 18 March 1965 ; 15 December 1965 ; 16 March 1966 ; 21–27 December 1968 ; 26 May 1969 ; 20 July 1969 ; 14 April 1970 ; Longest time in space ; Longest-duration crewed space station By nationality or sex; 12 April 1961; 5 May 1961 ; 20 February 1962 ; 16 June 1963 ; 2 March 1978 ; 2 April 1984 ; 25 July 1984 ; 15 October 2003 ; 18 October 2019 Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female Shuttle pilot, and with Shuttle mission STS-93 in 1999 she became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft. For many years, the USSR and the United States were the only countries whose astronauts flew in space. That ended with the 1978 flight of Vladimir Remek., citizens from 38 nations have flown in space aboard Soviet, American, Russian, and Chinese spacecraft. Space programsHuman spaceflight programs have been conducted by the Soviet Union–Russian Federation, the United States, Mainland China, and by American private spaceflight companies.Current programsThe following space vehicles and spaceports are currently used for launching human spaceflights:
NASA and ESA use the term "human spaceflight" to refer to their programs of launching people into space. These endeavors have also formerly been referred to as "manned space missions", though this is no longer official parlance according to NASA style guides, which call for gender-neutral language. Planned future programsUnder the Indian Human Spaceflight Program, India was planning to send humans into space on its orbital vehicle Gaganyaan before August 2022, but it has been delayed to 2024, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Indian Space Research Organisation began work on this project in 2006. The initial objective is to carry a crew of two or three to low Earth orbit for a 3-to-7-day flight in a spacecraft on a LVM 3 rocket and return them safely for a water landing at a predefined landing zone. On 15 August 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, declared India will independently send humans into space before the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022. In 2019, ISRO revealed plans for a space station by 2030, followed by a crewed lunar mission. The program envisages the development of a fully-autonomous orbital vehicle capable of carrying 2 or 3 crew members to an about low Earth orbit and bringing them safely back home.Since 2008, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency had developed the H-II Transfer Vehicle cargo-spacecraft-based crewed spacecraft and Kibō Japanese Experiment Module–based small space laboratory. NASA is developing a plan to land humans on Mars by the 2030s. The first step has begun with Artemis I in 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon and returning it to Earth after a 25-day mission. SpaceX is developing Starship, a fully reusable two-stage system, with near-Earth and cislunar applications and an ultimate goal of landing on Mars. The upper stage of the Starship system, also called Starship, has had 9 atmospheric test flights as of September 2021. The first test flight of the fully integrated two-stage system occurred in April 2023. A modified version of Starship is being developed for the Artemis program. Several other countries and space agencies have announced and begun human spaceflight programs using natively developed equipment and technology, including Japan, Iran, and North Korea. The plans for the Iranian crewed spacecraft are for a small spacecraft and space laboratory. North Korea's space program has plans for crewed spacecraft and small shuttle systems. National spacefaring attempts
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