Datasets:
license: cc0-1.0
pretty_name: Astronaut Database
language:
- en
description: >-
Every person who has traveled to space, sourced from Wikidata. 863 astronauts
from 64 countries with flight counts and time in space.
size_categories:
- n<1K
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
tags:
- space
- astronaut
- human-spaceflight
- wikidata
- missions
- open-data
- tabular-data
- parquet
configs:
- config_name: default
data_files:
- split: train
path: data/astronauts.parquet
Astronaut Database
Part of the Astronomy Datasets collection on Hugging Face.
Complete database of every person who has traveled to space — 863 astronauts from 64 countries, sourced from Wikidata.
Dataset description
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.
Schema
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
wikidata_id |
string | Wikidata entity ID (e.g. Q1029) |
name |
string | Full name |
birth_date |
string | Date of birth (YYYY-MM-DD) |
death_date |
string | Date of death if deceased |
sex |
string | Sex (male/female) |
nationality |
string | Nationality |
employers |
string | Employers, semicolon-separated (space agencies, contractors) |
num_flights |
int | Number of spaceflights |
time_in_space_min |
int | Total time in space (minutes) |
birth_year |
int | Year of birth (derived) |
time_in_space_hours |
float | Total time in space (hours, derived) |
Quick stats
- 863 astronauts from 64 countries
- 733 male, 130 female
- 644 with recorded spaceflights
- Most flights: Fyodor Yurchikhin (12)
- Top nationalities: United States (447), Soviet Union (95), Russia (89), People's Republic of China (33), Japan (17)
Usage
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")
Data source
Wikidata SPARQL endpoint. Astronauts identified via property P106 (occupation) = Q11631 (astronaut). Data is community-curated by WikiProject Spaceflight.
Update schedule
Static dataset. Re-run manually to pick up new astronauts.
Related datasets
- launch-log -- McDowell launch log
- satcat -- Satellite catalog
- nasa-eva -- NASA EVA history
Pipeline
Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets
Support
If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.
Citation
@dataset{astronaut_database,
author = {Simon, Julien},
title = {Astronaut Database},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Hugging Face},
url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/astronaut-database},
note = {Sourced from Wikidata (CC0)}
}
License
CC0-1.0 (Wikidata content is public domain)