Jonathan's Space Pages

Human Spaceflight Missions, Astronauts, Selections, Rides and Segments

This section lists astronauts and their space missions. I use the following concepts:

• A space traveller is any individual who has travelled to a geodetic altitude above the Earth's surface (geoid) of more than 80 km. For now I will consider all primates to be individuals, but neglect non-primate species.
• An astronaut is a space traveller who is a hominid. (All astronauts to date are homo sapiens, but I would count a Denisovan if you could find one and send them up on a rocket.) See the Rides list of distinctions between various categories of astronauts (government, private, etc.).
• A mesonaut is someone who has flown above 50 km, but not above 80 km. In my characterization of the space environment, they have flown in the mesosphere but not in space.

  
  

• An astronaut selection is the selection of an individual for space missions by a particular space agency. Note that there are multiple selection entries for some astronauts - i.e. some individuals have been selected by more than one agency at different times.

  
  

• A spaceflight mission is a launch of a vehicle carrying space travellers to an altitude of 80 km or more. I also use the term mission to refer to the entire flight of the vehicle so launched from launch to landing, possibly including multiple segments with different crew members.

  
  We also consider a category of aborted missions, which reached engine ignition or carrier plane takeoff and would have been spaceflight missions but did not reach 80 km.

  
  

• A spaceflight project is a series of related spaceflight missions using the same spaceship design and carried out by the same launching organization (`space agency').
• A spaceflight program is an overall related activity of an organization composed of one or more individual projects. For example, Project Mercury and the Space Shuttle were different projects but clearly part of the same overall NASA human spaceflight program, while the X-15, although also having some NASA involvement, was a quite separate activity.

  
  

• A role identifies the assignment of an astronaut to a mission or specific segment of a mission with particular duties, such as commander or flight engineer.

  
  

• A ride is the launch of a particular individual on a particular mission and their ensuing flight until their return to Earth (not necessarily on the same mission). (space historian Jim Oberg has calls this a `ticket'.) The total number of rides is larger than the total number of space travellers, since some individuals have made multiple spaceflights.

  
  

• Rides may be divided into multiple ride segments in which a space traveller transfers from one spacecraft to another or is reassigned from one role or mission to another.

  
  

• An astronaut trainee is someone selected by a space agency to train for space flight. What counts as a space agency and who counts as a trainee is a bit fuzzy - especially in the case of agencies which never got around to launching an actual mission during their existence. I have reserved the right to make arbitrary decisions on this issue, and I make no guarantee of completeness for the trainee lists, which are provided as supplementary information of interest. Note that I leave individuals on the trainee lists even after they complete a flight. The Trainee and Trainee Selection lists are therefore supersets of the main Travellers and Selections lists.

Table	Data	Column descriptions	Contents
Space Travellers	astro	astrolist.html	The list of astronauts, Gagarin onwards
Space Selections	astrosel	astrosel.html	Which astronaut group(s) each astronaut was part of
Space Missions	missions	missions.html	The list of space missions, Vostok 1 onwards
Space Missions (Aux)	auxmissions	missions.html	Auxiliary mission list: ships launched uncrewed
Expeditions	expeditions	missions.html	Mission codes for space station expeditions
Space Projects	programs#projects	-	The list of human spaceflight projects
Space Programs	programs	-	The list of human spaceflight programs
Roles	roletags	roles.html	List of role tags
Rides	rides	ridecols.html	One line for each flight by each astronaut
Ride Segments	segments	segcols.html	One line for each flight segment by each astronaut
Spacewalks	evas	evas.html	List of spacewalks
Space Trainees	trainee.html	astrolist.html	List of selected astronaut trainees, flown and unflown
Space Trainee Selections	trainsel.html	astrosel.html	Which astronaut group(s) each trainee was part of
Suborbital Missions	suborb.html	-	List of suborbital human spaceflights, with additional mission data for each
Mesospheric Missions	meso.html	-	List of mesospheric human flights - almost but not quite spaceflights.

There are other excellent sources on human space travellers and their information may be more up to date. In particular as of 2021, I recommend SpaceFacts. I haven't checked my data against theirs.