Space Traveller stats and trivia
Total number of space travellers who flew to space
(including those who died in launch failures or suffered launch aborts)
... as of 20 September 2023 stands at 605,
... of which 531 (87.8%) were male, and 74 (12.2%) were female.
Average number of flights per space traveller
... currently stands at 2.25
First human in space
Yuri Gagarin (Russia) was the first man in orbit aboard Vostok 1 on 12-Apr-1961.
First (and still the youngest) woman to fly in space
Valentina Tereshkova (Russia) was 26 years, 3 months and 10 days old when flying Vostok 6 on 16-Jun-1963.
First ever space walk
Alexei Leonov (Russia) during the Voskhod 2 mission on 18-Mar-1965.
First woman to conduct a spacewalk
Svetlana Savitskaya (Russia) during the Soyuz T-12 mission on 25-Jul-1984.
First person on the moon
Neil Armstrong (USA), commander of Apollo 11 on 16-Jul-1969.
The last astronaut on the moon to date
Eugene Cernan (USA), commander of Apollo 17 was the last man to leave the moon on 14-Dec-1972.
The only astronaut of the 'Original Seven' to put his foot on the moon
Alan Shepard (USA), commander of Apollo 14 became the only moon walker from the first US astronaut group, also called the 'Mercury Seven'.
The youngest person to fly in orbit to date
Gherman Titov (Russia) was 25 years, 10 months and 25 days old when flying Vostok 2 on 06-Aug-1961.
The oldest person to fly in orbit to date
John Glenn (USA) was 77 years, 3 months and 11 days old when flying STS-95 on 29-Oct-1998.
The most frequent space travellers
Franklin Chang-Díaz (USA) and Jerry Ross (USA) both flew on seven space shuttle missions.
Most experienced space traveller
Sergei Avdeyev (Russia) on three space flights between 1992 and 1999 spent a total of 747 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes in orbit.
Most experienced female space traveller
Christina Koch (USA) during a single space flight in 2019/20 spent a total of 328 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes in orbit.
The longest single flight duration
Valeri Polyakov (Russia) spent over 437 days in orbit on the Mir space station between 08-Jan-1994 and 22-Mar-1995.
First woman to go to space twice
Svetlana Savitskaya (Russia) flew to the Salyut 7 space station in August 1982 and again in July 1984.
First woman to command a US Space Shuttle
Eileen Collins (USA) was commander on STS-93, launched 23-Jul-1999. She was again comander on STS-114, the shuttle return-to-flight mission, launched 26-Jul-2005. The only other female commander of a Space Shuttle was Pamela Melroy (USA) on STS-120, launched 23-Oct-2007.
First paying space tourist
American Dennis Tito in 2001 became the first paying passenger to visit the International Space Station (ISS) for eight days, flying on two different Soyuz TM spacecraft.
Countries with at least one space traveller
... currently 38: Afghanistan, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Belorus, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cuba, Czech Republic, Georgia, Germany, France, Hungaria, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Arab Eemirates, United Kingdom, USA, Uzbekhistan, Vietnam
Space travellers who died during spaceflights
Eighteen. One cosmonaut on Soyuz-1 (parachute deployment failure; 1967), three cosmonauts on Soyuz-11 (capsule depressurization during re-entry; 1971), seven astronauts on STS-51L (Challenger launch failure; 1986), and seven astronauts on STS-107 (Columbia re-entry breakup; 2003). Four of these space travellers were female.