- published: 21 Apr 2015
- views: 30567
Human spaceflight (or manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is space travel with humans on the spacecraft. When a spacecraft is manned, it can be piloted directly, as opposed to machine or robotic space probes controlled remotely by humans or through automatic methods onboard the spacecraft.
The first human spaceflight was launched on April 12, 1961 by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Currently, only Russia and China maintain human spaceflight capability independent of international cooperation. As of 2011, human spaceflights are being actively launched by the Soyuz programme conducted by the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Shenzhou program conducted by the China National Space Administration. This does not account for private non-government activities.
The US lost human spaceflight launch capability upon retirement of the Space Shuttle on July 21, 2011. Under the Bush administration, the Constellation program included plans for canceling the Shuttle and replacing it with the capability for spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. In the 2011 United States federal budget, the Obama administration proposed canceling Constellation in part due to Constellation being over budget and behind schedule while not innovating and investing in critical new technologies. Under the new plan, NASA would rely on transportation services provided by the private sector, such as Space X's Falcon 9. The period between the retirement of the Shuttle and the initial operational capability of new systems (either Constellation or the new commercial proposals), similar to the gap between the cancellation of Apollo and the first Space Shuttle flight, is often referred to as the human spaceflight gap.