Who gets to be an astronaut? Here is every U.S. member of the elite group
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What does it take to become an astronaut? Since the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis signals the end of Nasa 's manned flight program (follow it on Google Earth here) - at least for now - we wondered who the U.S. men and women, NASA has in the Space brought.

It takes 20 months to qualify the training to become an astronaut, NASA sets here:

The term "Astronaut" derives from the Greek word meaning "space sailor," and refers to all those who were bound as crew members on board the NASA spacecraft to orbit and beyond launched. Since the beginning of NASA 's manned space program, we have retained the definition of \ selected "astronaut' as the title for those at the NASA astronaut corps, the" space sail "join to make their career profession. The term "cosmonaut" refers to the space sailors who are members of the Russian space program

Most of this information is of Nasa 's 2005 list of astronauts, so we' ve ON U.S. members of this elite crew focused. You can view details of the international members and affiliated Russian cosmonauts on the data sheet below. We have updated it from 2005 to 2011 of the NASA list of current and former astronauts and candidates.

That is every American astronaut since the first election in 1959 - the groups are elected every five years. The list includes Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first man on the moon. It also includes Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark, who died in the Columbia space shuttle in February 2003.

It 's mainly a male group, and especially from a military background (equivalent to NASA' s close relationship with the U.S. military establishment). Although only 49 of the 336 were female, two of the astronauts with the most hours in space Women: Shannon Lucid and Susan Helms. Michael Fincke, who spent 9159 hours in space.

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