Human Spaceflight

Human spaceflight (also referred to as crewed spaceflight or manned spaceflight) is space travel with a crew or passengers aboard the spacecraft. Spacecraft carrying people may be operated directly, by human crew, or it may be either remotely operated from ground stations on Earth or be autonomous, able to carry out a specific mission with no human involvement.

The first human spaceflight was launched by the Soviet Union on April 12, 1961 as a part of the Vostok program, with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard. Humans have been continuously present in space for 18 years and 149 days on the International Space Station. All early human spaceflight was crewed, where at least some of the passengers acted to carry out tasks of piloting or operating the spacecraft. After 2015, several human-capable spacecraft are being explicitly designed with the ability to operate autonomously.

Russia and China have human spaceflight capability with the Soyuz program and Shenzhou program. In the United States, SpaceShipTwo reached the edge of space in 2018; this was the first crewed spaceflight from the USA since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011. Currently, all expeditions to the International Space Station use Soyuz vehicles, which remain attached to the station to allow a quick return if needed. The United States is developing commercial crew transportation to facilitate domestic access to ISS and low Earth orbit, as well as the Orion vehicle for beyond-low Earth orbit applications.

Orbital human spaceflight

Human orbital spaceflight programs:

• Vostok, 1961, simulated in [1] and [2] add-ons
• Project Mercury, 1962, simulated in [3], [4], [5], [6] and [7]
• Voskhod, 1964
• Gemini, 1965
• Soyuz, 1967
• Apollo, 1968
• Space Shuttle, 1981
• Shenzhou, 2003, simulated in [8] and [9]

Suborbital human spaceflight

Human suborbital spaceflight programs:

• X-15, 1962
• SpaceShipTwo, 2004