Alan Shepard: Second person to fly in space on short sub-orbital flight in May, 1961 aboard a Mercury Freedom 7. He was later to fly to the moon aboard Apollo 14. He retired from NASA and the US navy as a Rear Admiral in 1974. He is president of the Mercury 7 Foundation and lives in Houston, Texas.
Gherman Titov: First to fully orbit the Earth, completed 17 trips around the globe during a 25-hour flight in 1961. He never flew in space again although he assumed senior positions in the Soviet space programme. He is now retired and lives in Moscow.
John Glenn: Second person to orbit the earth, he completed three orbits in a Mercury Friendship 7 capsule spending almost five hours in space in February 1962. Glenn retired from NASA and the US marines and went into politics. He is still, at 76, a sitting US senator for Ohio. More recently he has been in the news as he undergoes further training for a flight aboard the US space shuttle Discovery, planned for October 16th.
Valentina Tereshkova: The first woman in space, she orbited the earth for 71 hours in Vostok 6 in mid-1963. She married fellow cosmonaut, Andrian Nikolayev, who flew in the earlier Vostok 3 mission, in November 1963. The couple had what was then described as the world's first "space baby", Yelena, born on June 8th, 1964. The marriage didn't last, however, and they divorced in 1983.
Neil Armstrong: First person to walk on the moon, born 1930, selected as astronaut 1962, flew on Gemini 8 mission and Apollo 11. He walked on the moon for almost three hours on July 20th, 1969. He resigned from NASA in 1971, was a professor of Aerospace Engineering for a time at the University of Cincinnati and is now chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation (CTA) Inc of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Junior: Second person to walk on the moon, he piloted the lunar module which touched down on the moon and followed Armstrong on to the lunar surface. He also was an earlier Gemini astronaut. Nicknamed Dr Rendezvous because of his skill at docking manoeuvres, he retired from NASA and the US air force as a colonel and is the president and founder of Research and Engineering Consultants Inc in California. He lives in Los Angeles.