Astronauts



An astronaut or cosmonaut (космона́вт ) 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.

Definition
Until 2003, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, either by the military, or by civilian space agencies. However, with the first sub-orbital flight of the privately-funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, 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 astronauts on missions coordinated by those two agencies.

The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) defines spaceflight as any flight over. However, in the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of are awarded astronaut wings.