Space Travel would be nothing if it weren’t for its most important part: the astronauts themselves. In this article, I will be telling you about some of the famous astronauts and the difference they made in space travel.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
These are probably two of the most famous astronauts of all time. They were the first people to ever step on the moon.
Yuri Gagarin
He is probably one of the most important astronauts. He is the first person to ever go to space. He orbited the earth once on his spacecraft.
Alan Shepard
He was the first American to be in space. In 1971, he walked on the moon.
John Glenn
He is the first American to ever orbit the earth, circling it three times. After retiring from NASA, he served as a democratic senator from Ohio.
Valentina Tereshkova
She is the first woman to have flown in space. She piloted Vostok 6 on June 6, 1963.
Alexey Leonov
He became the first person to ever walk in outer space and to exit the capsule.
Svetlana Savitskaya
She became the second woman in space. On her mission in 1984, she became the first woman to perform a spacewalk and the first woman to fly in space twice.
Sally Ride
She was the third woman in space, and the first American woman in space.
Chris Hadfield
He was the first Canadian to walk in space.
Guion Bluford
He was the first African American in space.
Mae C. Jemison
She was the first African American woman to travel in space.
Rakesh Sharma
He was the first Indian in space.
Astronauts on the Columbia Space Shuttle
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. They were astronauts Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, and Laurel Blair Salton Clark.
Kalpana Chawla
She was the first Indian woman in space, but died during the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster.
Astronauts on the Space Shuttle Challenger
These astronauts all died on January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight. The seven people were Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe.
This is obviously not every single astronaut that ever traveled in space, but I think I covered a lot of the famous ones. Thank you for reading this article.