Astronaut

by Jerry Coffey on January 6, 2008

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

Backpacking in Space

What makes a person an astronaut? Is it a college degree or service in the military? Is it a sense of adventure and curiosity, or could it be the cool clothes and a love of dehydrated food? Whatever it is, the astronaut has fascinated us since he only existed in science fiction literature.

Today an astronaut can live on a space station or fly missions to resupply and repair space telescopes. Plans are in the works to land astronauts on the Moon again and attempt to set foot on Mars. Is there no limit for where the astronaut may go in the future? I would say not. What is impossible will be worked out and overcome by future generations.

For now, let’s look at contemporary astronauts like Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, and, of course, Neil Armstrong. There are thousands upon thousands of articles on the internet about each astronaut. We have compiled a page full of links to the astronaut articles here on Universe Today. We do not expect you to read through the links until your are squinty-eyed without knowing what you might expect, so here are a few astronaut facts to get you primed for link diving.

Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, but did you know that Alan Shepard was the first American to make it there?

Neil Armstrong is famous for his Apollo 11 ‘moon walk’, but that was not his first trip into space.

There are dozens of food choices that an astronaut can make before going into space. Ice cream was a popular request until it was actually made. Very few astronauts wanted the freeze dried version that could go into space, so it was only stocked on one mission.

The average spacesuit costs$12 million(U.S.). Not bad considering a person would die in less than one minute without one.

These are just a few of the interesting astronaut facts that you will find in the links below. Hopefully, you find everything that you need and, as always, enjoy your research.