Apollo 7 photographed in flight by ALOTS (68-HC-641)

This is a list of all human spaceflights throughout history. Beginning in 1961 with the flight of Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1, human spaceflight occurs when a human crew flies a spacecraft into

outer space Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, pred ...

. Human spaceflight is distinguished from spaceflight generally, which entails both crewed and uncrewed spacecraft. There are two definitions of spaceflight. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), an international record-keeping body, defines the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space at above sea level. This boundary is known as the Kármán line. Additionally, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

awards astronaut wings to qualified personnel who pilot a spaceflight above an altitude of . As of the launch of

Shenzhou 15 Shenzhou 15 () is a Chinese spaceflight that launched on 29 November 2022 at 15:08 UTC. The flight marked the tenth crewed Chinese spaceflight and the fifteenth flight of the Shenzhou program. The spacecraft carried three People's Liberation Army ...

on 29 November 2022, there have been 367 human spaceflight launches. Two missions did not cross either the Kármán line or the U.S. definition of space and therefore do not qualify as spaceflights. These were the fatal STS-51-L ( Challenger disaster), and the non-fatal aborted Soyuz mission T-10a. Two aborted missions did cross either the Kármán line or the U.S. definition of space. These were the non-fatal aborted Soyuz mission MS-10 which did not reach the Kármán line but did pass the 80 km (50 mi) line. The other was the non-fatal Soyuz mission,

18a The 18A was an Argentine ''cacerolazo'' that took place on April 18, 2013. Attended by nearly two million people, it was the largest demonstration at the time against the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Antecedents The 18A (a term tha ...

which crossed the Kármán line. Four missions successfully achieved human spaceflight, yet ended as fatal failures as their crews died during the return. These were Soyuz 1,

X-15 flight 191 X-15 Flight 3-65-97, also known as X-15 Flight 191 (due to being the 191st free flight of the X-15), was a sub-orbital spaceflight of the North American X-15 experimental spaceplane, carrying seven experiments to a peak altitude of , above NA ...

, Soyuz 11, and STS-107 ( ''Columbia'' disaster). Sixteen flights in total reached an apogee beyond , but failed to go beyond , so therefore do not qualify as spaceflights under the FAI definition.

Summary

Since 1961, three countries (

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, and the

) and one former country (

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

) have conducted human spaceflight using thirteen different spacecraft series, or: "programs", "projects".

Human spaceflights

The Salyut series, Skylab, Mir, ISS, and Tiangong series space stations, with which many of these flights docked in orbit, are not listed separately here. See the detailed lists (links below) for information. * Missions which were intended to reach space but which failed to do so are listed in ''italics.'' * Fatal missions are marked with asterisks. * Missions between 80 km (50 mi) and 100 km (62 mi) are marked in ''cursive''.

Timeline

Notes

External links

''Spacefacts''
Compare with the present article. The ''Spacefacts'' list includes most flights listed here, but omits twelve: The three failed launches of STS-51-L, Soyuz T-10a and Soyuz MS-10, none of which achieved human spaceflight, the uncrewed launch of Soyuz 34 (which nevertheless returned a crew to Earth), and the eight sub-orbital human spaceflights: Mercury-Redstone 3 and 4, X-15 flights 90 and 91, SpaceShipOne flights 15P, 16P and 17P, and Soyuz 18a.

Similarly, see the list for "Manned Spaceflight" given at ''Astronautix'', which includes other related categories.

References

Vostok and Voskhod flight historyX-15 flight history (altitudes given in feet)Apollo-Soyuz flight historySpace Shuttle flight history infographicSpaceShipOne flight history
{{DEFAULTSORT:List of human spaceflights Human spaceflight Spaceflight timelines