Today is Maksim Surayev’s birthday. He made a flight to the ISS in 2009-10. He was also the first cosmonaut to keep a blog while on orbit. Hopefully he’ll continue it when he goes up again in 2014.

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Oleg Kononenko took a tour of the ISS with a fisheye lens. Everything looks a lot bigger!

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Vladimir Kovalyonok on a spacewalk from the Salyut 6 station. (1978)

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Sergei Krikalev after putting on his Sokol spacesuit for the launch of Soyuz TMA-6. (2005)

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evanfleischer:

Freezelight Cosmonauts.

The backup crew of Soyuz TMA-04M visited а special gazebo in Baikonur a few days ago. It was here on 10 April 1961 that cosmonauts (Gagarin, Titov, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Popovich and Bykovsky), Chief Designer Sergei Korolyov and high ranking officials held an important meeting to discuss Yuri Gagarin’s flight as the first man in space.

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Leonid Popov and Romania’s Dumitru Prunariu training for Soyuz 40, part of the Interkosmos program. (1981)

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Anton Shkaplerov, on the keyboard, and Dan Burbank playing together on the ISS.

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Ура! Dmitri Kondratyev recieved his Hero of the Russian Federation award yesterday at the Kremlin.

(This has been eagerly anticipated by my Mom, he’s her favourite cosmonaut.)

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It’s Valeri Polyakov’s 70th birthday today. He holds the record for the longest single spaceflight: he arrived on 10 Jan 1994 to Mir and left on March 22 1995, for a total of 437 days in space. In total he has made two flights for an overall of 678 days in space.

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Today is the anniversary of Vladimir Komarov’s death while flying Soyuz 1.

He launched from Baikonur on April 23 1967. After entering orbit, one of the solar panels failed to open and the solar-stellar attitude control sensor had been contaminated with exhaust. This meant that the ship did not automatically orient itself towards the sun and with only one solar panel working, there was little power for the Soyuz. Eventually Komarov was able to orient his ship towards the sun manually. The original mission was to have Soyuz 2 launch the next day and dock with Soyuz 1, with 2 cosmonauts transferring to Soyuz 1. This was cancelled and the new plan was to get Komarov home as soon as possible. The main engine failed to fire for the deorbit burn, so Komarov had to manually reenter, a complex task that he had not trained for. Komarov was an experienced airman and successfully guided his ship back to Earth. According to controllers, he sounded “calm, unhurried, without any nervousness.” The parachute was the Soyuz’s undoing. Both the primary and backup parachutes did not deploy properly and the Soyuz hit the Earth at 144 kh/h. Komarov died on impact and Soyuz 1 was found in flames by the rescue crew. Komarov was given a state funeral and was interred in the Kremlin wall.

Everyone who has safely flown, is flying; and those who will fly into space on a Soyuz should remember that they owe their reliable and safe return to the ground not only to the creators of that spacecraft, but also to Vladimir Komarov. - Boris Chertok, Rockets and People, Vol. 3

Set of three stamps put out in 1981 to coincide with the flight of Romania’s Dumitru Prunariu. The crew of Soyuz 40 spent 7 days in space aboard Salyut 6.

Another birthday today: Sergei Zalyotin. He was the commander of the last Mir expedition crew in 2000. He also made a flight to the ISS: Soyuz TMA-1 in 2002.

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Aleksandr Laveykin celebrates his birthday today. He spent 174 days in space on Mir in 1987.

My favourite quote from him comes from Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars:

“You really feel the absence of a woman,” Laveikin tells us. “There are sexual dreams, as a substitute. It’s constant through the flight. We were even discussing that maybe we have to take something from the sex shops. It was discussed at [Institute for Biomedical Problems].”

Laveikin breaks into English, as he does sometimes to tweak a translation:  ”A rubber woman.” A blow-up doll. Ground control, he says, nixed the idea. “They said, ‘If you would do that, then we would need to put it in your schedule for the day.’ “

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Mikhail Kornienko gives the thumbs up after landing on Soyuz TMA-18. (2010)

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