A taikonaut is a name used for a space explorer belonging to which country's space program?

An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek 'ἄστρον' ('astron'), meaning 'star', and ναύτης ('nautes'), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the term is sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and tourists.

"Astronaut" technically applies to all human space travelers regardless of nationality or allegiance; however, astronauts fielded by Russia or the Soviet Union are typically known instead as cosmonauts (from the Russian "kosmos" (космос), meaning "space", also borrowed from Greek) in order to distinguish them from American or otherwise North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-oriented space travellers.

Comparatively recent developments in crewed spaceflight made by China have led to the rise of the term taikonaut (from the Mandarin "tàikōng" (meaning "space"), although its use is somewhat informal and its origin is unclear. In China, the People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps astronauts and their foreign counterparts are all officially called 'hángtiānyuán' (meaning "heaven navigator" or literally "heaven-sailing staff").