This summer, NASA has two space shuttle missions scheduled to go to the International Space Station (ISS), a spacecraft going to the asteroid belt, and the first scout mission going to land on the pla

Charles Simonyi, a 58 year-old billionaire software engineer, is paying $20 to $25 million to go to the International Space Station. Space Adventures Ltd. of Vienna, Virginia will send Simonyi to the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in March. He’ll be the fifth person they have sent into space.

On Wednesday, October 13, 2005, China launched its second manned flight from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Two Chinese astronauts, Fei Junlong (40 years old) and Nie Haisheng (41 years old) are known in Chinese as “yuhanghuan” which means “travelers of the universe”.

On Earth, the atmosphere and the magnetosphere protect us from many different, dangerous things from space. In space, astronauts are exposed to many expected and unexpected dangers. Lack of oxygen probably comes to mind first. But there are many other unexpected and life-threatening surprises. When astronauts go into space, their spacecraft and spacesuits help protect them from atmospheric pressures and from temperature changes. There is no protection from radiation, high-energy protons, heavy ions, or cosmic rays.

Retired astronaut Bruce McCandless was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on Saturday, April 30, 2005. McCandless was the first man to fly freely and untethered in space by using the first

NASA has 142 astronauts, and 46 have never flown in space. Some have recently completed the Astronaut Candidate training program, others have waited for years to be chosen for a mission in space.

The newest astronauts were warned that they may never get a chance to fly aboard a shuttle. The Space Shuttle fleet hasn’t flown in over 2 years (since the Columbia disaster) and the era of the Space Shuttle is expected to end in 5 years. The development of the next-generation of space vehicles could take until 2015. Some of the astronauts may never fly in space.