Gopi Thotakura

Gopi is a pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive. He’s co-founder of Preserve Life Corp, a global center for holistic wellness and applied health located near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In addition ...

Carol Schaller

Carol is a retired CPA. In 2017, her doctor told her she would likely go blind. She has since traveled to 25 countries around the world, visited Mount Everest Base Camp, trekked to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda to see mountain ...

Kenneth Lafferty Hess

Ken is a software engineer and entrepreneur who shaped today's technology-based family history industry when he developed the Family Tree Maker product line in the 1990s. The company was acquired by Ancestry.com in 2003. In 2001, Ken gave ...

Sylvain Chiron

Sylvain is the founder of the Brasserie Mont Blanc, one of the largest craft breweries in France. Sylvain was born in the French Alps and is a lifelong aviator and skier. He earned his pilot’s license at age 16. After spending several summers in ...

Mason Angel

Mason is the founder of Industrious Ventures, a venture capital fund supporting early-stage companies that enable or progress new industrial revolutions. Mason is an active member in his family’s foundation and will use this mission to inspire ...

Edward Joseph Dwight Jr

In 1961, Ed was chosen by President John F. Kennedy to enter training at the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS), an elite U.S. Air Force flight training program known as a pathway for entering the NASA Astronaut Corps. In 1963, after ...

Neil Kornswiet

Since Neil Kornswiet was a young boy in Ohio, he’s been fascinated with all things space and space travel. He watched the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo launches on his family’s tiny black-and-white TV; he devoured every space-related book he could ...

Franz Haider

For Austrian entrepreneur and world traveler Franz Haider, the dream of becoming an astronaut started at the tender age of 7, when he saw the Apollo 11 Moon landing. His mother cautioned him, however, that his home country had no space program. ...

Robie Vaughn

Robie Vaughn and his wife, Fallon, strive to lead by example, whether in business, philanthropy or adventure. “We’d like to show that you can have fun while trying your best,” he says. “That philosophy applies to just about everything in life.” ...

Lina Borozdina

As a child in Odessa, Ukraine, Lina Borozdina’s dad would tell her bedtime stories about her cousin and her sneaking onto a spaceship as stowaways to go on space adventures. By age 6, she already knew all the constellations and their associated ...

Aleksandr Gorbunov

Born in Zheleznogorsk, Kursk region, Russia, he studied engineering with qualifications in spacecraft and upper stages from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Gorbunov graduated from the military department with a specialty in operation and repair of ...

Taylor Gun-Jin Wang

Taylor Gun-Jin Wang is a Chinese-born American scientist and in 1985, became the first person of Chinese origin to go into space. While an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wang was a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger ...

Shengjie Tang

Tang Shengjie is a Chinese pilot and astronaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program. He enlisted in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Forces in September 2008, and joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in March 2013.

Xinlin Jiang

Jiang Xinlin is a Chinese pilot and astronaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program. He enlisted in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Forces in September 2006, and joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in January 2010.

Astronaut 022

Passenger on Galactic 05.

Kellie Gerardi

Kellie Gerardi is an American aerospace, defense, and technology professional and a popular science communicator.

Sol Alan Stern

Sol Alan Stern is an American engineer and planetary scientist. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express.

Marina Vasilevskaya

Belarusian flight attendant selected to fly on Soyuz MS-25 and spend approximately 12 days onboard the International Space Station.

VG Astronaut 018

Trevor Beattie is a British advertising executive. He is a founding partner, chairman and creative director of Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB), and was formerly the chairman and creative director of TBWA London.

VG Astronaut 019

Namira Salim born in Karachi, is a Pakistani polar adventurer, future astronaut and artist based in Monaco and Dubai.

What is the difference between a cosmonaut and an astronaut?

Cosmonaut and astronaut are synonyms, that is, theoretically we can use them interchangeably, but traditionally we call people launched into space by the Americans astronauts and by the Russians cosmonauts, regardless of what nationalities they were. That is, Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Italians, French and Germans flying with Americans are astronauts. In contrast, General Hermaszewski, the only (so far) Pole in Space, is called a cosmonaut because he flew as part of the Soviet space program.

Taikonauta (taikonauta)

A co z chińczykami? Na zachodzie chińczyków w kosmosie nazywają taikonautami. Co ciekawe słowo tajkonuta, z chińskiego "taikong" (czyli przestrzeń kosmiczna) wymyślił najprawdopodobniej dla żartu pod koniec lat 90. malezyjski fan lotów kosmicznych i posłużył się nim w tekście internetowym, co podchwyciły zachodnie media. Sami Chińczycy mówią o swoim astronaucie – yuhangyuan.