Editing Human spaceflight (section)

=== By nationality or sex ===
; 12 April 1961
: [[Yuri Gagarin]] became the first Soviet and the first human to reach space, on [[Vostok 1]].
; 5 May 1961
: [[Alan Shepard]] became the first American to reach space, on ''[[Mercury-Redstone 3|Freedom 7]]''.
; 20 February 1962
: [[John Glenn]] became the first American to orbit the Earth.
; 16 June 1963
: [[Valentina Tereshkova]] became the first woman to go into space and to orbit the Earth.
; 2 March 1978
: [[Vladimír Remek]], a [[Czechoslovakia]]n, became the first non-American and non-Soviet in space, as part of the [[Interkosmos]] program.
; 2 April 1984
: [[Rakesh Sharma]], became the first Indian in space and to orbit the Earth, on [[Soyuz T-11]].
; 25 July 1984
: [[Svetlana Savitskaya]] became the first woman to [[Extravehicular activity|walk in space]].
; 15 October 2003
: [[Yang Liwei]] became the first Chinese in space and to orbit the Earth, on [[Shenzhou 5]].
; 18 October 2019
: [[Christina Koch]] and [[Jessica Meir]] conducted the first woman-only [[Extravehicular activity|walk in space]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2019/10/18/nasa-astronauts-wrap-up-historic-all-woman-spacewalk/ | title=NASA Astronauts Wrap Up Historic All-Woman Spacewalk | date=18 October 2019 | first=Mark | last=Garcia | publisher=NASA | access-date=23 January 2020}}</ref>

[[Sally Ride]] became the first American woman in space, in 1983. [[Eileen Collins]] was the first female Shuttle pilot, and with Shuttle mission [[STS-93]] in 1999 she became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft.

For many years, the USSR (later Russia) and the United States were the only countries whose astronauts flew in space. That ended with the 1978 flight of Vladimir Remek. {{As of|2010}}, citizens from 38 nations (including [[space tourism|space tourists]]) have flown in space aboard Soviet, American, Russian, and Chinese spacecraft.