README.md

---
license: cc0-1.0
pretty_name: "Astronaut Database"
language:
  - en
description: "Complete database of every person who has traveled to space, sourced from Wikidata.  Since Yuri Gagarin's flight aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961, fewer than 700 individuals have crossed the Karman line "
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
tags:
  - space
  - astronaut
  - human-spaceflight
  - wikidata
  - missions
  - open-data
  - tabular-data
  - parquet
size_categories:
  - n<1K
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/astronauts.parquet
    default: true
---

# Astronaut Database


<div align="center">
  <img src="banner.jpg" alt="Blue Marble — Earth from space" width="400">
  <p><em>Credit: NASA/GSFC/Suomi NPP</em></p>
</div>


*Part of a [dataset collection](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/space-essentials-69cbafd7ea046a10eff11405) on Hugging Face.*

## Dataset description

Complete database of every person who has traveled to space, sourced from Wikidata.

Since Yuri Gagarin's flight aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961, fewer than 700 individuals have crossed the Karman line (100 km altitude). This dataset records every one of them, from the Mercury Seven and Voskhod cosmonauts through Space Shuttle crews, ISS expeditions, and the recent wave of commercial astronauts aboard Crew Dragon and New Shepard.

The dataset includes birth/death dates, sex, nationality, employer history (space agencies and contractors), number of spaceflights, and total time spent in space. This enables demographic analysis of astronaut corps, diversity-in-STEM research, and historical studies of human spaceflight programs.

Sourced from Wikidata's structured knowledge base (property P106=Q11631 for occupation:astronaut), which is maintained by the WikiProject Spaceflight community and updated as new flights occur.


This dataset is suitable for **tabular classification** tasks.

## Schema

| Column | Type | Description | Sample | Null % |
|--------|------|-------------|--------|--------|
| `wikidata_id` | str | Wikidata entity ID (e.g. 'Q1029'); resolves to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1029 — links to the astronaut's full biography, mission list, and nationality data | Q77349 | 0.0% |
| `name` | string | Full legal name as recorded in Wikidata (English transliteration for non-Latin scripts) | Abdul Ahad Mohmand | 0.0% |
| `birth_date` | str | Date of birth in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD); null for living persons who have not disclosed their birth date or for historical records with unresolvable uncertainty | 1959-01-01 | 2.3% |
| `death_date` | str | Date of death in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD); null for living astronauts | 2018-05-26 | 74.8% |
| `sex` | string | Recorded biological sex; values: 'male', 'female'; null if not recorded in Wikidata | male | 0.0% |
| `nationality` | string | Country of citizenship at the time of primary spaceflight career (e.g. 'United States', 'Russia'); uses full English country name; may differ from country of birth | Germany | 0.0% |
| `employers` | string | Space agencies or contractors that employed the astronaut, semicolon-separated (e.g. 'NASA; Boeing'); null if no employer is recorded in Wikidata | Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; N... | 46.5% |
| `num_flights` | Int64 | Number of distinct spaceflights completed (each separate launch counts as one flight); 0 if the astronaut trained but never flew | 2 | 0.0% |
| `time_in_space_min` | float64 | Cumulative time spent in space across all missions, in minutes; null for astronauts with no recorded flights | 12746.0 | 21.3% |
| `birth_year` | Int64 | Integer year extracted from birth_date; enables age-group analysis when full date is unavailable; null only if birth date is entirely unknown | 1959 | 2.3% |
| `time_in_space_hours` | Float64 | Cumulative time in space in decimal hours, derived from time_in_space_min (divided by 60, rounded to 1 decimal); null for astronauts with no recorded flights | 212.4 | 21.3% |

## Quick stats

- **865** astronauts from **60** countries
- **734** male, **131** female
- **647** with recorded spaceflights
- Most flights: Fyodor Yurchikhin (12)
- Top nationalities: United States (452), Russia (135), Soviet Union (49), People's Republic of China (33), Germany (17)

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/astronaut-database", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()
```

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/astronaut-database", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Astronauts by nationality
print(df["nationality"].value_counts().head(10))

# Female astronauts
female = df[df["sex"] == "female"]
print(f"{len(female):,} female astronauts")

# Most time in space
top_time = df.nlargest(10, "time_in_space_hours")[["name", "nationality", "time_in_space_hours"]]
print(top_time)

# NASA astronauts
nasa = df[df["employers"].str.contains("NASA", na=False)]
print(f"{len(nasa):,} NASA-affiliated astronauts")

# Flight count distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["num_flights"].value_counts().sort_index().plot(kind="bar")
plt.xlabel("Number of Flights")
plt.ylabel("Astronauts")
plt.title("Spaceflight Count Distribution")
plt.show()
```

## Data source

https://www.wikidata.org/

## Related datasets

- [juliensimon/space-launch-log](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/space-launch-log)

- [juliensimon/space-track-satcat](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/space-track-satcat)

- [juliensimon/nasa-eva-chronology](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/nasa-eva-chronology)

> If you find this dataset useful, please consider [giving it a like](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/astronaut-database) on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

## About the author

Created by [Julien Simon](https://julien.org) — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the [Space Datasets](https://julien.org/datasets) collection.

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{astronaut_database,
  title = {Astronaut Database},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/astronaut-database},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}
```

## License

[CC0-1.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)