Valery Bykovsky
He was one of the first generation of cosmonauts, totalling over 20 days in space
27 March 2019 saw the loss of the influential Soviet Union cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky at the age of 84. His contributions to the Soviet space programme at the pinnacle of the Space Race era paved the way for future generations. He still holds the record for the longest solo spaceflight, 56 years after the mission.
Bykovsky was born on 2 August 1934 in Pavlovsky Posad, a town near Moscow in what is now Russia but was formerly the Soviet Union. His family had to move around a lot due to the outbreak of World War
II. Pursuing a career as a pilot, in November 1955 he graduated from Kachinsk Military Aviation Academy with outstanding marks in flying and combat training. This began his aviation adventure.
It wasn’t until he was 26 years old that he began cosmonaut training. He was selected to be part of the first crop of cosmonauts in March 1960 alongside Yuri Gagarin and was assigned to Vostok 5. He piloted Vostok 5 when it was launched on 14 June 1963. He was the Soviet’s fifth person in space and the
11th overall. He spent his time conducting science experiments, photographing Earth’s beautiful horizon and recording his body’s reaction to the microgravity felt at low-Earth orbit.
After two days in space and 31 orbits around our home planet, Bykovsky was joined by fellow cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who was piloting Vostok 6. They flew in tandem and came as close as five kilometres (three miles) to each other. This spaceflight was designed to last for eight days, but due to powerful and unpredictable solar flare activity – which could have had potentially dire consequences for spacecraft electronics – the mission was ended after four days, 23 hours and seven minutes. This mission holds the record for the longest solo spaceflight in history, but Bykovsky did not stop there.
His next spaceflight came 13 years later as part of the Soyuz 22 mission. Prior to that he was supposed to be commander of the Soyuz 2 mission, but due to several problems during Soyuz 1's flight the mission returned early and there was no need for Soyuz 2 to launch to perform the planned rendezvous. After that he trained for the Soviet’s Moon landing programme, but that was scrapped after the United States beat them to it with the Apollo 11 mission.
In September 1976 Bykovsky flew with fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Aksyonov on Soyuz 22. Two years later he saw his third and final orbital flight when he docked onto the Salyut 6 space station as part of the Soyuz 31 mission along with the East German Sigmund Jähn.
Unfortunately his death leaves only two cosmonauts from the original group of 20: Alexei Leonov and Boris Volynov. His contributions to space travel did not go unnoticed as he was named Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of Red Star – two incredibly prestigious awards – for his efforts.
“He was selected to be part of the first crop of cosmonauts in March 1960 alongside
Yuri Gagarin”