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andromeda1023:
n March 1960 at the age of 26, Gorbatko was selected to train
alongside Yuri Gagarin and 18 other air force pilots as the Soviet
Union’s first cosmonaut group. With Gorbatko’s death, only three of the
original 20 cosmonauts remain — Valery Bykovsky, Alexei Leonov and Boris
Volynov.
Despite his early selection, Gorbatko’s first spaceflight did not come
until nine years later — eight years after Gagarin became the first human to fly in space and three months after the United States beat the Soviet Union in the race to land astronauts on the surface of the moon.
Launching on Oct. 12, 1969 as the research engineer on board Soyuz 7,
Gorbatko and his two crew mates, Anatoly Filipchenko and Vladislav
Volkov, embarked on a four-day, 22-hour mission that was intended to be the Soviet answer to the moon landing: having two crewed spacecraft dock in Earth orbit as a third hovered nearby to capture the feat in photographs.
Gorbatko and the Soyuz 7 crew did join the Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 8 crews in
orbit, but technical difficulties prevented Soyuz 7 from docking with
Soyuz 8 and kept the Soyuz 6 crew at a greater distance away than
planned. Gorbatko, Filipchenko and Volkov did conduct detailed
observations of the Earth, identifying raw mineral reserves in
geological target areas.
Gorbatko returned to space twice more, on Soyuz 24 in February 1977 and Soyuz 37 in July 1980. On his second flight, he and Yuri Glazkov
completed a 18-day mission to Salyut 5, marking the final visit to the
space station before it was de-orbited six months later. Gorbatko and
Glazkov conducted biological and materials experiments, as well as
reconnaissance activities.
In total, Gorbatko logged just over a month in space — 30 days, 12 hours and 47 minutes — in flying three missions.
Full article: http://www.space.com/36896-viktor-gorbatko-cosmonaut-obituary.html
(Source:
collectspace.com, via
spacetimewithstuartgary)
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