An Astronaut or Cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft. While generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists.
Until 2002, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, either by the military, or by civilian space agencies. With the sub-orbital flight of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of astronaut was created: the commercial astronaut.
DEFINITION
The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) Sporting Code for astronautics recognizes only flights that exceed an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 mi). In the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) are awarded astronaut wings.
As of June 20, 2011, a total of 523 people from 38 countries have reached 100 km (62 mi) or more in altitude, of which 520 reached low Earth orbit or beyond. Of these, 24 people have traveled beyond Low Earth orbit, to either lunar or trans-lunar orbit or to the surface of the moon; three of the 24 did so twice: Jim Lovell, John Young and Eugene Cernan. The three astronauts who have not reached low Earth orbit are Joe Walker, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie.
Under the U.S. definition, as of June 20, 2011, 529 people qualify as having reached space, above 50 miles (80 km) altitude. Of eight X-15 pilots who exceeded 50 miles (80 km) in altitude, only one exceeded 100 kilometers (about 62 miles). Space travelers have spent over 30,400 man-days (83 man-years) in space, including over 100 astronaut-days of spacewalks. As of 2008, the man with the longest cumulative time in space is Sergei K. Krikalev, who has spent 803 days, 9 hours and 39 minutes, or 2.2 years, in space. Peggy A. Whitson holds the record for the most time in space by a woman, 377 days.
ENGLISH
In the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and many other English-speaking nations, a professional space traveler is called an astronaut. The term derives from the Greek words ástron , meaning "star", and nautes, meaning "sailor". The first known use of the term "astronaut" in the modern sense was by Neil R. Jones in his short story "The Death's Head Meteor" in 1930. The word itself had been known earlier. For example, in Percy Greg's 1880 book Across the Zodiac, "astronaut" referred to a spacecraft. In Les Navigateurs de l'Infini (1925) of J.-H. Rosny aîné, the word astronautique (astronautic) was used. The word may have been inspired by "aeronaut", an older term for an air traveler first applied (in 1784) to balloonists. An early use in a non-fiction publication is Eric Frank Russell's poem "The Astronaut" in the November 1934 Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society.
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.
RUSSIAN
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 anglicisation of the Russian word kosmonavt , one who works in space outside the Earth's atmosphere, a space traveler, which derives from the Greek words kosmos , meaning "universe", and nautes, meaning "sailor".
The Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin was the first cosmonaut—indeed the first person—in space. Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian factory worker, was the first female in space, as well as arguably the first civilian to make it there. On March 14, 1995, Norman Thagard became the first American to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle, and became the first "American cosmonaut".
CHINESE
Official English-language texts issued by the government of the People's Republic of China use
astronaut while texts in Russian use космонавт (
kosmonavt). In official Chinese-language texts, the terms "yǔhángyuán" (
宇航员, "sailing personnel in universe") for cosmonaut and "hángtiānyuán" (
航天员, "sailing personnel in sky") for astronaut have long been used. The phrase "tàikōng rén" (
太空人, "spaceman") is often used in
Taiwan and Hong Kong.
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, the latter of which describes it as "a hybrid of the Chinese term taikong (space) and the Greek naut (sailor)"; the term became more common in 2003 when China sent its first astronaut Yang Liwei into space aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft. This is the term used by Xinhua in the English version of the Chinese People's Daily since the advent of the Chinese space program. The origin of the term is unclear; as early as May 1998, Chiew Lee Yih (趙裡昱) from Malaysia, used it in newsgroups.
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 the Russian Federation (and previously the former Soviet Union), the United States, and China have launched a manned spacecraft, several other nations have sent people into space in cooperation with one of these countries. Inspired partly by these missions, other synonyms for astronaut have entered occasional English usage. For example, the term spationaut (French spelling: spationaute) is sometimes used to describe French space travelers, from the Latin word spatium or "space", and the Malay term angkasawan was used to describe participants in the Angkasawan program. In Hungary the word describing astronauts is űrhajós (from űr meaning "space" and hajós meaning "sailor".)