French, Bulgarian and Mongolian astronauts have also made the trip. But none of this has recaptured public enthusiasm. The practical case for manned spaceflight was never strong, and it gets weaker as robots and computers get more powerful. Thousands of small unmanned objects have been launched into orbit. Satellites are routinely used for long distance telephones and TV broadcasts.
Weather forecasts depend on pictures and data from space.
Space exploration need not involve humans. Cameras and scientific instruments have beamed back pictures from the other planets of our Solar system. And the Hubble Space Telescope has imaged stars and galaxies so deep in space that their light set out on its journey towards us billions of years before our Earth and Sun were born. The cosmos is fantastically larger and more complex than could have been imagined by the ancients who first mapped the constellations. The cosmos confronted with huge spans of time, as well as stupendous expanses of space.