List of Astronauts By Year of Selection - 1980

1980

May 29 – NASA Group 9 – USA

Pilots: John Blaha, Charles Bolden, Roy Bridges, Guy Gardner, Ronald Grabe, Bryan O'Connor, Richard N. Richards, Michael J. Smith

Mission specialists: James Bagian, Franklin Chang-Diaz, Mary Cleave, Bonnie Dunbar, William Fisher, David Hilmers, David Leestma, John Lounge, Jerry Ross, Sherwood Spring, Robert Springer

International mission specialists: Claude Nicollier, Wubbo Ockels

Of this group, Franklin Chang-Diaz would become the first Hispanic-American in space, Michael Smith would perish in the Challenger Disaster, while John Blaha would fly aboard the Mir space station. Both Jerry Ross and Chang-Diaz currently jointly hold the record of number of manned spaceflights flown at seven. Charles Bolden was chosen in 2009 to become the second NASA astronaut and the first African-American to the post of NASA Administrator on a full-time basis (although Frederick Gregory, who is also African-American and a former Shuttle commander, held the post on a temporary basis between the departure of Sean O'Keefe and the appointment of Michael Griffin in 2005). The announcement, made a day before the conclusion of the STS-125 flight to the Hubble Space Telescope, was coincidental, because Bolden was the pilot on the telescope's deployment flight in 1990.

July 30 – LII-1/IMBP-3/MAP/NPOE-5/AN-2 Cosmonaut Group – Soviet Union

LII-1: Anatoly Levchenko, Alexandr Shchukin, Rimantas Stankevicius, Igor Volk

IBMP: Galina Amelkina, Yelena Dobrokvashina, Larisa Pozharskaya, Tamara Zakharova

MAP: Svetlana Savitskaya

NPOE: Yekaterina Ivanova, Natalya Kuleshova, Irina Pronina

AN-2: Irina Latysheva

1980 – CNES Group 1 – France

Patrick Baudry, Jean-Loup Chrétien

Chrétien and Baudry would become the first Frenchmen in space. Chrétien flew with Soviets to Salyut 7 in 1982, and Baudry on Space Shuttle STS-51-G flight in 1985. Chrétien would later fly to the Space Station Mir and would become a Shuttle Mission Specialist in the 1990s.