Helen Sharman - Project Juno

Project Juno

Sharman was selected to travel into space on 25 November 1989, beating 13,000 applicants, after responding to a radio advertisement asking for applicants to be the first British astronaut. The programme was known as Project Juno and was a cooperative arrangement between the Soviet Union and a group of British companies.

Sharman has been wrongly described as "selected by lottery", rather she was subjected to a rigorous selection process that gave weight to scientific, educational, and aerospace backgrounds as well as the ability to learn a foreign language. However, a lottery was one of several schemes used to raise money to underwrite the cost of the flight.

Before flying, Helen spent 18 months in intensive flight training in Star City. The Project Juno consortium failed to raise the monies expected, and the programme was almost cancelled. Reportedly Mikhail Gorbachev ordered it to proceed under Soviet expense in the interests of international relations, but in the absence of western underwriting, less expensive experiments were substituted for those in the original plans.

The Soyuz TM-12 mission, which included Soviet cosmonauts Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergei Krikalev, launched on 18 May 1991 and lasted eight days, most of that time spent at the Mir space station. Sharman's tasks included medical and agricultural tests, photographing the British Isles, and participating in an amateur radio hookup with British schoolchildren. She landed aboard Soyuz TM-11 on 26 May 1991, along with Viktor Afanasyev and Musa Manarov.

Sharman was just 27 years and 11 months old when she went into space and is, as of 2007, the fifth youngest of the 528 individuals (90 percent men) who have flown in space. The second youngest, Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union, became the first woman in space in 1963 at age 26 years and 3 months.

She has not returned to space, although she was one of three British candidates in the 1992 European Space Agency astronaut selection process, and was on the shortlist of 25 applicants in 1998.

For her Project Juno accomplishments, Sharman received a star on the Sheffield Walk of Fame.