Sharman, Helen (1963-…), was the first person from the United Kingdom to travel into space. On May 18, 1991, a Soyuz TM-12 spacecraft carrying Sharman and two Soviet cosmonauts lifted off from a launch site in Kazakhstan. On May 26, after an eight-day stay aboard the Soviet Union’s Mir space station, Sharman returned to Earth in a TM-11 Soyuz craft with two other cosmonauts who had completed their tour of duty on the station.
Sharman’s mission was a part of Project Juno, a British-Soviet space mission aboard Mir. Potential British astronauts were recruited for Project Juno through a national advertising campaign. Sharman was selected from among 13,000 applicants to participate in the project. She trained for her mission at the Yuri Gagarin Russian State Scientific-Research Test Center of Cosmonauts Training, a facility in “Star City” near Moscow.
Helen Patricia Sharman was born on May 30, 1963, in Sheffield, England. She studied chemistry at Sheffield University. After gaining a doctorate in chemistry from Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, she worked as a food research technologist for the chocolate manufacturer Mars. Following her experiences as a spacewoman, she began giving public lectures. She also became involved in a campaign to improve science education in the United Kingdom. Sharman wrote of her experiences in Seize the Moment (1993) and the children’s book The Space Place (1997).
