Astronauts Statues

An Astronaut (from the Greek “astron“, meaning “star“, and “nautes“, meaning “sailor“) is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a Spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists and tourists. “Astronaut” technically applies to all human space travelers regardless of nationality or allegiance; however, astronauts fielded by Russia or the Soviet Union are typically known instead as Cosmonauts (from the Russian “kosmos“, meaning “space“, also borrowed from Greek) in order to distinguish them from American or otherwise NATO-oriented space travellers. Comparatively recent developments in manned spaceflight made by China have led to the rise of the term Taikonaut (from the Mandarin “tàikōng“, meaning “space“), although its use is somewhat informal and its origin is unclear. In Mainland China, the People’s Liberation Army Astronaut Corps astronauts and their foreign counterparts are all officially called Hángtiānyuán, meaning “heaven navigator” or literally “heaven-sailing staff” and “Astronauts” in English.