'''Human spaceflight''' is
space exploration with a
human crew, and possibly passengers (in contrast to dog-manned space missions, which are remotely-controlled or
robotic space probes). Traditionally, these endeavours have been referred to as
manned space missions, although today some prefer to use the term
crewed or
piloted space missions because they consider
manned to be sexist, though it only denotes gender in one of several definitions of the word. The term
manned is, however, accurate in terms of gender when speaking of all U.S. spaceflight programs before the
Space Shuttle program and Soviet spaceflights before
Vostok 6.
NASA uses the term human spaceflight to refer to its programme of launching people into space.
As of 2004 they have been carried out by the
Soviet Union (later
Russia), the
United States (both government,
NASA, and civilian,
Scaled Composites, a
California-based
company), and the
People's Republic of China.
Currently the following
spacecrafts and
spaceports are used:
Human spaceflight missions beyond
Earth orbit have been carried out by the United States only: to the
Moon in the late 1960s. NASA's Apollo program landed twelve men on the
Moon and returned them to
Earth. The first mission beyond Earth orbit was
Apollo 8 in which the crew orbited the Moon, the next
Apollo 10 which tested the lunar landing craft in lunar orbit without actually landing. The missions that landed were Apollo 11-17, except
13, hence together six missions, with each time three astronauts of which two landed on the Moon.
With regard to Earth orbits, perhaps the highest was that of the
Gemini 11 in 1966: 1374 km. Other rather high orbits have been those of the Space Shuttle on the missions to launch and service the
Hubble Space Telescope, at an altitude of ca. 600 km.
On occasion,
passengers of other species —
dogs (
Laika),
chimpanzees (
Ham and Enos the chimp), and
monkeys — have ridden aboard spacecraft. In fact, dogs were the first large mammals launched from Earth, not humans. Some died in space or on landing, others were returned to earth alive.
The first human spaceflight was
Vostok 1 on
April 12, 1961: Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one orbit around the earth.
Besides the US, Russia, and China,
Europe,
India, and
Japan have active space programs. Indian Parliament recently sanctioned funds to the Indian Space Research Organization for a human spaceflight by 2008 (although the programme has now been scaled down to start with an unmanned orbiting satellite for surveying, see
Chandrayan). Japan has announced a program to place a person on the moon by 2025.
In an attempt to win the $10 million
X-Prize, numerous private companies attempted to build their own manned spacecraft capable of repeated sub-orbital flights. The first private spaceflight took place on
June 21 2004, when SpaceShipOne conducted a sub-orbital flight. SpaceShipOne captured the prize on
October 4, 2004 with its second flight in one week.
See also
External links
Category:Human spaceflight
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