Human spaceflight also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft , often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be remotely operated from ground stations on Earth, or autonomously , without any direct human involvement.
People trained for spaceflight are called astronauts American or other , cosmonauts Russian , or taikonauts Chinese ; and non-professionals are referred to as spaceflight participants or spacefarers. The first human in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin , who launched as part of the Soviet Union's Vostok program on 12 April at the beginning of the Space Race. Humans traveled to the Moon nine times between and as part of the United States' Apollo program , and have had a continuous presence in space for 24 years and 96 days on the International Space Station ISS.
As of March , humans have not traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 lunar mission in December Currently, the United States , Russia, and China are the only countries with public or commercial human spaceflight-capable programs.
Non-governmental spaceflight companies have been working to develop human space programs of their own, e. The first private human spaceflight launch was a suborbital flight on SpaceShipOne on June 21, These nations developed intercontinental ballistic missiles for the delivery of nuclear weapons , producing rockets large enough to be adapted to carry the first artificial satellites into low Earth orbit.
After the first satellites were launched in and by the Soviet Union, the US began work on Project Mercury , with the aim of launching men into orbit. The USSR was secretly pursuing the Vostok program to accomplish the same thing, and launched the first human into space, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Unlike Gagarin, Shepard manually controlled his spacecraft's attitude. Through , the US launched a total of two astronauts in suborbital flights and four into orbit.
