commercial astronaut

A commercial astronaut is a person who is a crew member of a privately-owned spacecraft. The FAA launched the commercial astronaut designation in 2004 to promote commercial innovation for spaceflight and was awarding commercial astronaut wings to non-astronaut people that flew into space. The program was ended in 2022 with the rise of commercial space tourism that involved non-crew-controlled space craft that are either ground-controlled or autonomously controlled entirely by on-board computers, with people flying into space as such non-crew members are designated as spaceflight participant instead.