Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky

Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky – Soviet cosmonaut No. 5, twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1963, 1976). The future cosmonaut was born in Pavlovsky Posad, Moscow Oblast. After finishing school he studied at the Kachinsk Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots, which he successfully graduated from in 1955 and became a fighter pilot. Then Bykovsky graduated from the N. E. Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and obtained the qualification of engineer-pilot-cosmonaut. In 1973 he defended his Candidate of Sciences dissertation on autonomous space navigation. In 1960 he became one of the first cosmonauts selected from the Air Force.

 

His first spaceflight took place from 14 to 19 June 1963 on the Vostok-5 spacecraft. The five-day flight (4 days 23 hours 6 minutes) occurred simultaneously with Valentina Tereshkova's flight on Vostok-6. Bykovsky's second flight took place from 15 to 23 September 1976 on the Soyuz-22 spacecraft. Its duration was 7 days (21 hours 52 minutes 17 seconds). Bykovsky's third and final spaceflight was as commander of a Soviet–German crew on Soyuz-31 (26 August – 3 September 1978) to work on the Salyut 6 orbital station. The return was aboard Soyuz-29, and the total flight duration was 7 days 20 hours 49 minutes 4 seconds. In 1988 Valery Fyodorovich retired. After being discharged into the reserve due to age in April of the same year, he headed the House of Soviet Science and Culture in Berlin until 1990. Valery Fyodorovich passed away on 27 March 2019 at his home in the village of Leonikha near Moscow.