page_title: Helen Sharman
section_title: Project Juno
hierarchical_section_title: Helen Sharman / Project Juno
caption_attribution_description: Helen Sharman was the first Briton into space. This suit is the same type she wore during her flight to the MIR Space Station. This specific suit is a training suit modified to appear the same as Helen's actual suit. The Kazbek couch, the Suit and dummy are sat on, is the actual launch couch Helen used to get to space and back.
context_page_description: Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC is a chemist who became the first British astronaut as well as the first woman to visit the Mir space station in May 1991.
context_section_description: After responding to a radio advertisement asking for applicants to be the first British space explorer, Helen Sharman was selected for the mission live on ITV, on 25 November 1989, ahead of nearly 13,000 other applicants. The programme was known as Project Juno and was a cooperative Soviet Union–British mission co-sponsored by a group of British companies.
  Sharman was selected in a process that gave weight to scientific, educational and aerospace backgrounds as well as the ability to learn a foreign language.
  Before flying, Sharman 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. With a view towards the flight's impact on international relations, the project proceeded under Soviet expense although as a cost-saving measure, 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 a licensed 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 27 years and 11 months old when she went into space, making her (as of 2017) the sixth youngest of the 556 individuals who have flown in space.  Sharman 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.
  Since Juno was not an ESA mission, Tim Peake became the first ESA British astronaut more than 20 years later.
  For her Project Juno accomplishments, Sharman received a star on the Sheffield Walk of Fame.
caption: Sokol space suit worn by Sharman, at the National Space Centre in Leicester.
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