People will argue that Sharman was a cosmonaut because she went into space with the Soviet Union.

The distinction is Cold War propaganda that has never made any sense to me. We have two English words to describe the same thing, but one is only used if the act was done or facilitated by Russia?

Technically that is correct, because Helen Sharman was a cosmonaut rather than an astronaut or taikonaut.

But NASA does that all the time. They recently claimed to perform the first flight and sound transmissions from another planet. The Soviet Venera missions had already done this during the 1980s from Venus. NASA performed the first powered flight on Mars.

I remember Tim Peake being a big thing, but I don't remember anyone saying he was first