Explorers and Trailblazers

Astronauts and cosmonauts make up a fair portion of this list, and those recognized here participated in missions that stood out for reasons large and small. They are but representatives of a very long list of brave, ingenious explorers who are establishing humanity’s first real foothold in space. But some of the most important explorers and trailblazers also opened up new frontiers without ever donning a spacesuit.

Richard B. Covey -- Commander of the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, which many people at the time felt saved NASA after the embarrassment of launching Hubble with faulty optics. While that might have been a bit of overstatement, the Hubble servicing mission came at a crucial time for the U.S. space agency and the crew that Covey led boosted the nation’s confidence that NASA could indeed rise to a challenge. After leaving NASA to work at Boeing, Covey was tapped along with fellow veteran astronaut Tom Stafford by NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe in 2003 to co-chair a committee  trusted with the tough  job of ensuring that their former colleagues do everything possible following the Columbia disaster to return the remainging shuttle fleet to flight status in a safe and responsible manner.

Michael Foale

Vasily Tsibliyev, Aleksandr Lazutkin and Michael Foale -- When a Progress resupply ship collided with the Russian Mir space station in 1997, causing the first decompression aboard an orbiting spacecraft in the history of human spaceflight, this crew sprang into action. Rather than abandon the station, Lazutkin, Tsibliyev and Foale cut cables and quickly sealed off the breached Spektr module and saved Mir. Foale, a veteran spacewalker has gone on to serve with distinction on the international space station and is widely credited with forging one of the best working relationships in the space program between Russians and Americans.

Sergei Krikalev -- The first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the U.S. space shuttle in 1994 donned a space shuttle flight suit again in 1998 to fly the first international space station assembly mission. Krikalev’s broad experience working with U.S. astronauts helped forge the early working relationship in space between the two countries after their space station programs were merged in the early 1990s. Krikalev’s work earned him a slot on the three-person Expedition One crew that in 2000 prepared the space station for future arrivals.

Liwei

Yang Liwei -- Yang’s 14 orbits around the Earth aboard the Shenzhou 5 capsule in October 2003 marked China’s entry alongside Russia and the United States as the only nations capable of putting their own citizens in space. His flight created excitement throughout Asia that was reminiscent of the hero’s welcome received by the first American and Soviet space explorers. Today, Yang draws huge crowds wherever he goes, not just in China but throughout Asia and officials throughout the region hope his mission and those that follow will spur ever greater public interest in science and technology careers.

Shannon Lucid -- The five-time spaceflight veteran has logged more hours in space than any woman in the world and also earned the respect of her colleagues, especially the cosmonauts she worked with on the Mir space station. When a planned three-month stay at Mir in 1996 turned into a six-month mission, Lucid never complained about the delays or conditions on the aging Mir. She was recognized as a hard working respected member of the crew. When Lucid finally got a ride home on a space shuttle, she was determined to walk off the shuttle when it landed, rather than be carried off as some of her predecessors had been after lengthy stays at Mir.

Rob Manning -- This JPL engineer is three-for-three in the nail-biting business of landing rovers on Mars. He did it for the first time on July 4, 1997 as the flight systems chief engineer for NASA’s Mars Pathfinder and twice more as the entry, descent and landing team leader for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in January 2004.

Michael Melvill -- The 61-year-old test pilot was at the controls of SpaceShipOne when it became the first privately-owned spacecraft to cross the boundary of space 100 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. It was not the smoothest of rides. During descent Melvill experienced gravity forces five times greater than normal when his winged spacecraft’s tail section flipped up causing the vehicle to accelerate again. He reconfigured it into a glider position to bring the historic mission to a safe, uneventful finale.

Dr. Valery Vladimirovich Polyakov -- World record holder after spending 475 consecutive days in space during a 1994-1995 mission to the Mir space station. Data collected during Polyakov’s record-breaking mission will be used for years to prepare future explorers for long duration spaceflight. In his career Polyakov, a medical doctor, spent 678 days in space.

Dennis Tito

Steve Squyres -- As principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, Squyres and his colleagues — along with a little help from the intrepid Spirit and Opportunity rovers — have revealed Mars’ watery past and given us all even more reasons to want to go there.

Dennis Tito -- a former NASA engineer turned financial wizard, Dennis Tito bought his way aboard the international space station over the strong objections from NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, proving that space is not just for astronauts and cosmonauts. This important first forced the partners to put a process in place for more paying customers to follow in Tito’s footsteps.