2008 in Spaceflight - Manned Spaceflight

Manned Spaceflight

Seven manned flights were launched in 2008, one by China, two by Russia and four by the United States. In April, Yi So-yeon became the first South Korean to fly in space, aboard Soyuz TMA-12. On the same flight, Sergey Volkov became the first second-generation cosmonaut. Yi returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-11, which nearly ended in disaster following a separation failure between the descent and service modules, resulting in a ballistic reentry. In September, China conducted its third manned mission, Shenzhou 7, from which Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming conducted the first Chinese spacewalk. Soyuz TMA-13, launched in October, was the hundredth flight of the Soyuz programme to carry a crew at some point in its mission.

Assembly of the International Space Station continued, with the delivery of the Columbus module by Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-122 in February. March saw the launch of the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle, an unmanned European spacecraft which was used to resupply the space station. Also in March, Space Shuttle Endeavour launched on STS-123 with the first component of the Japanese Experiment Module, the Experiment Logistics Module. STS-123 marked the final flight of the Spacelab programme, with a SpaceLab pallet used to carry the Canadian-built Dextre RMS extension. The second JEM component, the main pressurised module, was launched by STS-124, flown by Discovery in May. In November, Endeavour launched on the STS-126 logistics flight, with the Leonardo MPLM.