ASTRONAUT

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 term is sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists.

Until 2003, professional space travelers were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, either by the military or by civilian space agencies. However, with the launch of the privately-funded SpaceShipOne in 2005, a new category of astronaut was created—the commercial astronaut. 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.

The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary. The FAI defines spaceflight as any flight over 100 kilometres (62 miles). However, in the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 80 kilometres (50 miles) are awarded astronaut wings।

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II using a manned maneuvering unit outside the U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger in 1984