Spaceflight participant (Russian: участник космического полета, romanized: uchastnik kosmicheskogo polyota) is the term used by NASA,[1] Roscosmos,[2] and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)[3] for people who travel into space, but are not professional astronauts.
The Soviet Interkosmos program included participants selected from Warsaw Pact members and later from allies of the USSR and non-aligned countries.
Most of these people received full training for their missions and were treated as equals, but especially after the Mir program began, were generally given shorter flights than Soviet cosmonauts.
The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 stated that NASA should provide the "widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof".
The Naugle panel of 1982 concluded that carrying civilians—those not NASA astronauts—on the shuttle was part of "the purpose of adding to the public's understanding of space flight".