Curated playlist
NASA civilian astronauts
- Walter CunninghamWalter Cunningham sat in the lunar module pilot seat on a spacecraft with no lunar module. It was Apollo 7.
- Fred HaiseFred Haise came within days of becoming the sixth person to walk on the Moon. Then Apollo 13's oxygen tank ruptured.
- Jack SwigertJack Swigert won a seat in Congress but died seven days before he could take it. The Apollo 13 astronaut was 51.
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong's astronaut application came about a week late, until a colleague slipped it into the pile.
- John Young (astronaut)John Young walked on the Moon and later commanded the first Space Shuttle mission. He is the only person to do both.
- Deke SlaytonOne heart test grounded astronaut Deke Slayton in 1962. He then picked the crews who flew to the Moon.
- Rusty SchweickartAstronaut Rusty Schweickart took up meditation after a five-minute pause outside Apollo 9.
- Scott Kelly (astronaut)Scott Kelly, an American astronaut and naval aviator, rode a Soyuz TMA-16M rocket off the pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42 in the afternoon, Eastern time, on the 27th of March 2015. Most space travelers expect to come…
- Christina KochChristina Koch became the first woman to leave low Earth orbit in April 2026.
- Kalpana ChawlaKalpana Chawla was born in 1962 in Karnal, a city in Haryana, India, and in 1997 she was circling the Earth aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. She became an astronaut and aerospace engineer, and she was the first woman of Indian origin to fly…