50 Fun Facts About Astronauts

From which language do the roots of the word 'astronaut' ('star sailor') come?

Ancient Greek. The parts are astron, 'star', and nautes, 'sailor', and the word was already in print in science fiction around 1930, three decades before anyone flew.

What informal term is used for space travellers from China's program?

Taikonaut. The word bolts taikong, Chinese for space, onto the ending of astronaut, and was in use online by 1998, five years before China sent anyone into orbit.

At what altitude does the FAI's Kármán line, the boundary of space, sit?

100 km. The line is a convention, not a physical edge: the United States gives out astronaut wings from 50 miles up, about 80 km, so tallies of who has been to space differ.

By early 2026, roughly how many people had ever flown in space?

About 700. Counts run from roughly 650 to 780, depending on whether passengers on brief suborbital tourist hops are counted as space travellers.

In 1963 Joseph Walker became the first person to reach space twice, flying which rocket plane?

X-15. Dropped from beneath a B-52 bomber, it took Walker past the international edge of space twice in five weeks, the only one of its pilots ever to get that high.

Who was the first person to journey into outer space?

Yuri Gagarin. He did not land in his capsule: as planned, he ejected some 7 km above the ground and came down under his own parachute.

Which spacecraft carried the first man in space in April 1961?

Vostok 1. It flew on automatic with the pilot's manual controls locked, and the code to free them was sealed in an envelope on board in case of emergency.

Who was the first woman in space?

Valentina Tereshkova. She circled the Earth 48 times in 1963, and it was 19 years before another woman followed her into space.

What job did the first woman in space hold before being chosen as a cosmonaut?

Textile factory worker. What got her picked was her hobby: she was a keen amateur parachutist, and the first cosmonauts had to eject and land by parachute, apart from their capsules.

Who performed the first spacewalk, in March 1965?

Alexei Leonov. His suit swelled and stiffened so much in the vacuum that he had to let air out of it to squeeze back into the airlock.

Who was the first American in space?

Alan Shepard. His Freedom 7 flight was a 15-minute hop that never reached orbit, made just over three weeks after the Soviets had sent a man right round the Earth.

What did the Apollo 14 commander famously do on the Moon?

Hit golf balls. He had brought a six-iron head that fitted onto a sampling tool, and swung one-handed because his suit was too stiff for anything else.

Who was the first American to orbit the Earth?

John Glenn. A warning signal suggested his heat shield had come loose, so he flew re-entry with the retro-rocket pack still strapped on in the hope it would hold the shield in place.

The first American to orbit the Earth flew again in 1998 while holding which job?

US senator. Aged 77 and in his final months representing Ohio, he flew as a test subject for NASA's research into how weightlessness relates to ageing.

How many astronauts made up NASA's original Mercury group announced in 1959?

Seven. They were all that was left of 110 military test pilots who made NASA's first cut, 32 of whom went on to weeks of gruelling medical and psychological examinations.

Which Mercury astronaut was the only one to fly Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions?

Wally Schirra. On his Gemini flight, days before Christmas, he reported a UFO to Mission Control and then played 'Jingle Bells' on a harmonica he had smuggled aboard.

Which of NASA's original Mercury astronauts, grounded by a heart condition, finally flew on Apollo–Soyuz in 1975?

Deke Slayton. During his years on the ground he ran the astronaut office and picked the crews for Gemini and Apollo, including the men who went to the Moon.

Who was the first American woman in space?

Sally Ride. She applied after spotting a NASA recruitment notice in her student newspaper, one of more than 8,000 hopefuls for 35 places.

The first American woman in space was a nationally ranked junior player in which sport?

Tennis. She played for Stanford's team, counted Billie Jean King among her role models, and still chose a physics doctorate over a career on the court.

Who became the first African American in space, on STS-8 in 1983?

Guion Bluford. He was not the first Black person in space: Cuba's Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez had flown with the Soviets three years earlier, in 1980.

Who was the first African-American woman in space, aboard Endeavour in 1992?

Mae Jemison. She resigned from NASA within six months of the flight to start her own technology company, and later led a project on travel to other stars.

Which Star Trek character inspired the first African-American woman in space?

Lieutenant Uhura. In 1993 she joined the franchise herself, with a cameo in The Next Generation that made her the first real astronaut to appear in Star Trek.

The first African-American woman in space served as a Peace Corps doctor in Sierra Leone and which neighbouring country?

Liberia. From 1983 to 1985 she ran the medical care of Peace Corps volunteers and US embassy staff in both countries, then applied to become an astronaut.

As of 2026, which astronaut has spent more days in space than any other American or any other woman?

Peggy Whitson. She reached 695 days after retiring from NASA, by commanding private Axiom missions to the station she had twice commanded for the agency.

Scott Kelly's year-long ISS mission used whom as a ground-based comparison subject?

His identical twin Mark. Scott's telomeres, the caps on his chromosomes, grew longer in orbit, then most of them shortened again within two days of landing.

As of 2026, who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight, 437 days aboard Mir?

Valeri Polyakov. A space doctor, he meant the flight as a dress rehearsal for a trip to Mars, and said his goal was to show that a crew could arrive fit to work.

Who followed Neil Armstrong down the ladder to become the second person to walk on the Moon?

Buzz Aldrin. Before going outside he quietly took communion in the lander, keeping it off the air because NASA was being sued over the Bible reading broadcast from Apollo 8.

As of 2026, which cosmonaut holds the record for the most total time in space, over 1,100 days?

Oleg Kononenko. He passed Gennady Padalka's 878 days in February 2024 while still aboard the station, and stayed on for months more to finish his fifth mission.

Who was the first woman to pilot and later to command a Space Shuttle mission?

Eileen Collins. She started out with a two-year degree from her local community college, and in 2005 NASA gave her command of the first Shuttle flight after the Columbia disaster.

Who became China's first person in space aboard Shenzhou 5 in 2003?

Yang Liwei. He flew as a lieutenant colonel and was made a full colonel days after landing: the promotion is said to have been approved beforehand and kept from him so it would not distract him.

Who was the first British person in space, visiting Mir in 1991?

Helen Sharman. She was a chemist at the Mars confectionery company when she was chosen, so the British press nicknamed her 'the girl from Mars'.

The first Briton in space won the seat after answering what?

A radio advertisement. It asked for an astronaut with no experience necessary, drew about 13,000 applicants, and led to the mission known as Project Juno.

Which British astronaut ran the 2016 London Marathon on the ISS treadmill?

Tim Peake. Strapped to the treadmill by a harness so he would not float off the belt, he covered the distance in about three hours and 35 minutes.

Who became the first self-funded space tourist in 2001?

Dennis Tito. NASA, his one-time employer, objected to the trip, but the Russians flew him anyway, for a reported $20 million.

What kept Bruce McCandless flying when he made the first untethered spacewalk in 1984?

A nitrogen-jet backpack. He had helped develop the Manned Maneuvering Unit himself, and flew it about 100 metres out from Challenger with no line back to the ship.

Which astronaut's eight-day Starliner test flight in 2024 stretched to more than nine months?

Sunita Williams. Starliner's thrusters misfired on the way up, so NASA sent the capsule home empty, and she and Butch Wilmore waited for a SpaceX ride in March 2025.

As of 2026, who holds the American record for the longest single spaceflight, nearly 371 days?

Frank Rubio. His Soyuz sprang a coolant leak while docked, so a replacement had to be sent up empty and his six-month stay stretched to just over a year.

Which NASA astronaut, half of the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, had studied emperor penguins and bar-headed geese?

Jessica Meir. She raised bar-headed geese herself so their flight over the Himalayas could be studied in the lab, and her astronaut nickname is Goose.

Who was the first woman to perform a spacewalk, in 1984?

Svetlana Savitskaya. Moscow gave her the task three weeks after NASA announced a spacewalk for Kathryn Sullivan, and she did it first, welding metal outside Salyut 7.

Who was the first Indian in space, flying on Soyuz T-11 in 1984?

Rakesh Sharma. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked him how India looked from space, he answered with the first line of a patriotic song: better than the whole world.

Which Star Trek actor flew on a Blue Origin rocket in 2021, becoming at 90 the oldest person yet to reach space?

William Shatner. He expected to feel wonder and instead, he said later, was overwhelmed by the strongest grief he had ever known at the sight of the Earth from above.

Which cosmonaut is called 'the last Soviet citizen' for being aboard Mir when the USSR dissolved?

Sergei Krikalev. He launched from the Soviet Union and came home 311 days later to a different country, his return put off while the state that had sent him ceased to exist.

Who set the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman in 2019–20?

Christina Koch. Her 328 days were not the original plan but a mid-mission extension, and in April 2026 she flew around the Moon on Artemis II.

The 'Mercury 13' were women who underwent what in the early 1960s?

Astronaut screening tests. The privately funded trials used the same medical checks as the Mercury men, but NASA never took the women on; one, Wally Funk, finally flew in 2021, aged 82.

Which privately built rocket plane made Mike Melvill the first commercial astronaut in 2004?

SpaceShipOne. Two more flights that autumn won its backers the $10 million Ansari X Prize, and the craft was retired at once, its job done.

Jeremy Hansen, the first non-American to travel beyond low Earth orbit, comes from which country?

Canada. He had waited almost 17 years for a first spaceflight after his selection in 2009, and it took him farther from Earth than anyone had been before.

Who commanded Apollo 13, the 1970 Moon mission that had to be abandoned after an oxygen tank exploded?

Jim Lovell. It was his second journey to the Moon after Apollo 8, and he never set foot on it: the landing was called off and the crew only just made it home.

After orbiting the Earth for Project Mercury, Scott Carpenter began a second pioneering career as what?

An aquanaut. In 1965 he spent about four weeks living and working on the ocean floor off California in the Navy's SEALAB II.

Which Canadian astronaut recorded a version of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' aboard the ISS in 2013?

Chris Hadfield. He was the station's commander at the time and posted it as his farewell, the first music video ever filmed in space.

Gus Grissom died in a 1967 launch-pad fire during a test for which mission?

Apollo 1. Pure oxygen fed the fire and the hatch could not be opened against the pressure inside, and the redesign that followed held up crewed Apollo flights until October 1968.