Cosmonaut in the context of "Vostok 3KA"

Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $2.76 billion (adjusted for inflation). The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.

The Space Race began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. This came as a shock to the American public, and led to the creation of NASA to expedite existing US space exploration efforts, and place most of them under civilian control. After the successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, crewed spaceflight became the next goal. The Soviet Union put the first human, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, into a single orbit aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Shortly after this, on May 5, the US launched its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight. Soviet Gherman Titov followed with a day-long orbital flight in August 1961. The US reached its orbital goal on February 20, 1962, when John Glenn made three orbits around the Earth. When Mercury ended in May 1963, both nations had sent six people into space, but the Soviets led the US in total time spent in space.

This is a list of crewed and uncrewed flights of Soyuz series spacecraft.

The Soyuz programme is an ongoing human spaceflight programme which was initiated by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, originally part of a Moon landing project intended to put a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. It is the third Soviet human spaceflight programme after the Vostok and Voskhod programmes. Since the 1990s, as the successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia has continued and expanded the programme, which became part of a multinational collaboration to ensure a permanent human presence in low Earth orbit on the ISS (ISS). Soyuz spacecraft previously visited the Salyut and Mir space stations. Between the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first orbital flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon in 2019, Soyuz were the only human-rated orbital spacecraft in operation, and the only way to transport crews to the ISS. Russia plans to succeed Soyuz in the 2020s with the Federatsiya/Orel programme, using new reusable capsules launching on Angara rockets, to transport cosmonauts to orbit and to a space station around the Moon.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Budarin (Russian: Николай Михайлович Бударин) (born 29 April 1953) is a retired Russian cosmonaut, a veteran of three extended space missions aboard the Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. He has also performed eight career spacewalks with a total time of 44 hours.

Named a cosmonaut candidate in 1989, Budarin's first space mission was a long-term assignment aboard the space station Mir in 1995. Since then, he again made extended stays on Mir in 1998 and the International Space Station Expedition 6 from 2002 to 2003.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful crewed spaceflight, became the first person to journey into outer space. Travelling on Vostok 1, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961, with his flight taking 108 minutes. By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union amidst the Space Race, he became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including his country's highest distinction: Hero of the Soviet Union.

Hailing from the village of Klushino in the Russian SFSR, Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy in his youth. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norway–Soviet Union border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme alongside five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet respectively.

Spaceflight participant (Russian: участник космического полета, romanized: uchastnik kosmicheskogo polyota) is the term used by NASA, Roscosmos, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for people who travel into space, but are not professional astronauts or cosmonauts.

While the term gained new prominence with the rise of space tourism, it has also been used for participants in programs like NASA's Teacher in Space and astronauts designated by inter-government agreements like the Angkasawan program and the Korean Astronaut Program.

Cosmonautics Day (Russian: День Космона́втики, romanized: Den' Kosmonávtiki) is an anniversary celebrated in Russia and some other post-Soviet states on 12 April. In 2011, at the 65th session of the United Nations General Assembly, 12 April was declared as the International Day of Human Space Flight in dedication of the first crewed space flight made on 12 April 1961 by the 27-year-old Soviet Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin orbitedthe Earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.

Alexander Alexanderovich Misurkin (Russian: Aлександр Aлександрович Мисуркин) (born 23 September 1977), a major in the Russian Air Force, is a Russian cosmonaut, selected in 2006. He flew aboard Soyuz TMA-08M on 28 March 2013 as his first space mission, and launched on Soyuz MS-06 as his second flight, in 2017. He was commander of the International Space Station for Expedition 54.

The Voskhod (Russian: Восход, lit. 'Sunrise') was a spacecraft built by the Soviet Union's space program for human spaceflight as part of the Voskhod programme. It was a development of and a follow-on to the Vostok spacecraft. Voskhod 1 was used for a three-man flight whereas Voskhod 2 had a crew of two. They consisted of a spherical descent module (diameter 2.3 metres (7.5 ft)), which housed the cosmonauts, and instruments, and a conical equipment module (mass 2.27 tonnes or 5,000 pounds, 2.25 m (7.4 ft) long, 2.43 m (8.0 ft) wide), which contained propellant and the engine system. Voskhod was superseded by the Soyuz spacecraft in 1967.