Vladimir Kovalenko - Soviet cosmonaut, pilot, colonel-general of aviation. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, awarded medals and orders of the Soviet Union for courage and heroism, for the contributions he made to the development of science in Russia. Vladimir Kovalenok has received foreign awards. Awarded the title of Hero of the German Democratic Republic and the Mongolian People's Republic. With his labors, he made a huge contribution to the development of science in the field of space, and even after completing his work in astronautics, he continued his work in this area.
Vladimir, was born in a difficult wartime, his entire childhood fell on a hungry season. The boy loved to look at the sky and dreamed of rising over the cities, controlling the "steel bird". Vladimir was so carried away by this idea - to become a pilot, that gradually, it grew into the goal of his life. Even fellow villagers called him a "pilot" from childhood. Already, being a young boy, and not a child, Vladimir became interested in astronautics. In those days, in newspapers and magazines, notes began to appear about launches of artificial satellites and the study of space, and Vladimir Kovalenok read everything to the point that fell into his hands. At first, Vladimir wanted to enter a medical institute, believing that it was the doctors who would fly into space first, but then he changed his mind and went to the flight school, thereby surprising the chairman of the prestigious medical academy, to which a simple village guy immediately entered the school bench. But after talking with him, he realized that in front of him was the future cosmonaut of the USSR, so Vladimir was so obsessed with going to conquer space. He graduated with honors from the flying school, and as one of the gifted and extraordinary pilots was selected for the cosmonaut training school.
Kovalenok made his first flight in 1977, but, unfortunately, he was not successful, the task facing the crew was not completed - due to failures and breakdowns, the spacecraft was forced to return to Earth. Then there was a second flight in 1978. Here, the Crew, led by Vladimir Kovalenko, has completed its task perfectly, the necessary research and docking have been carried out. But the most important thing is that the crew answered the scientists' question - can a person be in space for more than 120 days. After all, the flight lasted about 140 days, and confirmed that the probability of a man being in space for a long time is very high. The third and last flight into space Kovalenok made in 1981. After that, he retired from flying.
The contribution to the science and development of the space industry of this cosmonaut is great and undeniable. Even after retiring from flying, Vladimir did not leave this profession, he started training young cosmonauts and other issues related to work in this area. This serious and responsible person does not indulge anyone, including himself!
In the wake of nationalist hysteria, many in Belarus began to look for national heroes in the distant past. From old chronicles, like corpses, the names of the Lithuanian and Polish nobility of the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Commonwealth began to emerge. Even if we close our eyes to the fact that all these Sapieha and Radziwills have a very distant relationship to today's Belarusians, one can only be surprised at how impassable depths of centuries our compatriots are crawling into in search of role models.
Meanwhile, our recent history is replete with examples of the most real heroism: industrialization, the struggle against fascism, the post-war reconstruction of Belarus and, as the crown of all this, the flight into space of the glorious son of the Belarusian land Pyotr Ilyich Klimuk.
Former Belarusian cosmonaut No. 1 was born on July 10, 1942 in the village of Komarovka, Brest region, during the Nazi occupation.
Klimuk himself recalled his early childhood as follows: “I was born in a partisan detachment in 1942. At the beginning of the war, the Germans attacked so quickly that they did not have time to draft our father into the Red Army, and our whole family went into the forest. My mother and two sisters nursed me, during the bombing they all hid together in trenches and dugouts. My father died at the front in 1944, Belarus was already liberated ... "
For a long time, the children left without a father were raised by their mother Marfa Pavlovna alone. They lived practically from hand to mouth until a stepfather appeared in the family.
The hard post-war life was a harsh school. I had to show all my innate talents in order to somehow make ends meet.
Already in his teens, Klimuk had a reputation in his village as a jack of all trades, capable of making any thing necessary for the household out of nothing. However, such an early "labor activity" did not prevent him from being a diligent student. By the way, in his school years, Klimuk sat at the same desk with another person who later became famous - the future head of the Belarusian National Bank, Petr Prokopovich.
And it was during the years of his apprenticeship that Klimuk finally decided on what he wanted to do in his adult life.
Here is how it was. Once on the outskirts of Komarovka, the legendary Soviet fighter MiG-15 made an emergency landing. All the village children ran out to gaze at this unprecedented sight, among whom was the young Petya Klimuk. The boy was so impressed by the majestic appearance of the plane and the pilot who got out of the cockpit that he firmly decided for himself that he wanted to link his fate with the sky.
After graduating from school in 1959, Klimuk entered the flight school in Kremenchug, after which he became a cadet of the Chernigov Higher Military School of Pilots named after the Lenin Komsomol. Here he and his classmates learn about Gagarin's flight into space.
As Klimuk himself recalled, on the occasion of such an event, all the cadets were even released from classes. Gagarin became a real idol of future pilots. One can imagine how delighted the young people were when in the fall of 1962 he visited their school.
Listening to Gagarin's stories about space and his flights, Klimuk was eager to become an astronaut, but at that time it seemed to him that this dream was impossible.
On the other day, after Klimuk graduated from college with honors and just started serving in the 57th Guards Red Banner Fighter Regiment, a certain commission came to his unit to select officers who were to take on the development of new top-secret technology.
Later it turned out that in fact the members of the commission were selecting candidates for astronauts.
Klimuk successfully passed the medical examination and in October 1965 arrived in Star City, where he was enrolled in the detachment of Soviet cosmonauts.
Here, in the CTC (Cosmonaut Training Center), Klimuk again meets Gagarin, who at that time held the position of deputy chief there.
Subsequently, Pyotr Ilyich often liked to recall the warm friendly relations that had developed between him and the first cosmonaut of the Earth: “He was everywhere with us: he jumped with a parachute, underwent survival tests in a pressure chamber or during hydrotesting ... He was a soulful man. We knew each other well. " Gagarin even attended his wedding.
However, one should not think that friendship with Gagarin gave Klimuk any privileges. Before becoming a real astronaut, he had to go through grueling and arduous training for eight years.
During this time, Pyotr Ilyich had to experience unbearable loads under extreme human conditions in a pressure chamber, heat chamber, isolation chamber, on a centrifuge and other special devices. In addition, the future cosmonaut was obliged to understand technology and master medicine, astronomy, geophysics and other science.
In total, in order to successfully complete their studies, it was necessary to pass about a hundred different exams. Klimuk coped with this with honor and completed a general course of general space training and preparation for flights on ships of the Soyuz type.
However, his first space flight was, according to Klimuk himself, "unplanned."
The fact is that Klimuk trained for a long time as part of the second crew and was supposed to fly only in case of any force majeure. That is why, when a week before the supposed launch, Klimuk and his flight engineer Valentin Lebedev were announced at the State Commission that they would fly, both young cosmonauts were somewhat discouraged.
Although, by and large, they deserved it, because they showed much higher results than the main crew in complex training and exams.
This was the first time in the history of Soviet cosmonautics when the crew received the right to fly not according to the priority set from above, but thanks to their knowledge and skills.
On this day, the commander of the Soyuz-13 spacecraft, Pyotr Ilyich Klimuk, became the first Belarusian who was lucky enough to go on a journey to the stars.
The crew under the leadership of our fellow countryman stayed in low-earth orbit for 7 days 20 hours 55 minutes and 35 seconds. During this time, the cosmonauts managed to fully fulfill the eight-day flight program developed by the Byurakan Observatory, which provided for "field tests" of the newest Orion-2 telescope system. It was planned that the crew would be able to get photographs of the stars that no one had received before.
As a result, the result exceeded all the expectations of scientists, and Klimuk was awarded the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the rank of lieutenant colonel.
In his native Belarus, he was given an unprecedented welcome here. Now few people remember, but at that time Klimuk enjoyed almost the same popularity among Belarusians as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus.
Just as in his time Gagarin turned into the most revered person in the USSR in just one day, Klimuk became incredibly popular in Belarus. Many saw a certain special symbolism in the fact that a simple country guy flew into space.
Pyotr Ilyich became a real personification of Belarus - a backward peasant land, which over several decades turned into an industrially developed region, keeping pace with scientific and technological progress.
Subsequently, Klimuk visited space twice more.
In 1975, as a crew commander, he flew to the Salyut-4 orbital station, where he broke the world record for staying in low-earth orbit, spending 62 days 23 hours 20 minutes 8 seconds away from Earth.
For this outstanding result, he received the second Star of the Hero.
Three years later, in the summer of 1978, within the framework of the international program "Interkosmos", Pyotr Ilyich went on his third space flight.
Together with the Pole Miroslav Germashevsky, he, who by that time had already become a major general, led an expedition to visit the Salyut-6 orbital scientific station. By the way, at that time there was also another famous Belarusian cosmonaut - Vladimir Kovalenok.
In total, the duration of all three Klimuk flights is 78 days 18 hours 18 minutes 42 seconds.
The third trip to the stars was the last for Klimuk. He moved to a managerial job.
To Klimuk's credit, he managed to support the life of Russian cosmonautics in the turbulent 90s. In 2004, he retired with the rank of Colonel General.
It is noteworthy that at the end of his life Klimuk devoted himself entirely to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe Union State of Russia and Belarus, working on one of its committees. Perhaps that is why the name of the first Belarusian cosmonaut is much less popular in nationalist circles than collaborators like Fabian Akinchits and Mikhail Vitushka.
Well, everyone has their own heroes.
Belarusians will always remember the person who paved the way for them to the stars. In order to be convinced of this, it is enough to go to the small homeland of Klimuk, where a museum of cosmonautics is open, which is very popular among tourists.
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More than half a thousand people were sent into space. Three of them are Belarusians Oleg Novitsky, Vladimir Kovalenok and Petr Klimuk. These names are familiar to every resident of the neighboring republic of the Russian Federation. In this article, you will be presented with information about the Belarusian cosmonauts. So let's get started.
The beginning of the story
In 2015, humanity celebrated the 58th anniversary of the beginning of the space age. It all started on October 5, 1957, when Sputnik-1 was launched into orbit by Soviet scientists. For all the inhabitants of the planet, this was the discovery of the era of stars, galaxies and new worlds.
Soon, brilliant engineering minds prepared everything for the next stage of the development of the black abyss. And on April 12, 1961, a breakthrough was made. Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly into space. And this first attempt to conquer extraterrestrial space became a landmark event in the history of the planet.
Over the next 50 years, astronautics developed at a fairly active pace. Dozens of orbital stations and hundreds of satellites were launched. Many technological and scientific experiments have been carried out. And, of course, the Belarusian cosmonauts made a very significant contribution to this matter. We will talk about the most famous of them below.
Petr Klimuk
This person needs no introduction. And for those who do not know, Petr Klimuk is the first Belarusian cosmonaut, scientist, colonel general, doctor of technical sciences. In 1965 he was enrolled in the squad of the conquerors of the starry sky. Later he became a colleague of Gagarin. Peter was then only 23 years old. The young man completed the cosmonaut training course. This allowed him not only to confidently fly on ships like the Soyuz, but also to work perfectly on orbital stations like the Salyut. As a commander, he made 3 space travels.
The first flight
Held in 1973. Klimuk headed the Soyuz-13 spacecraft. The flight duration was just over a week. In 1975, Pyotr Ilyich was enlisted in the reserve crew of the Soyuz-17. In the same year, Klimuk became a backup for the Soyuz-18-1 commander, which, unfortunately, had a bad start.
Second flight
It happened in May 1975 and lasted for 62 days. Petr Ilyich was assisted by flight engineer Sevastyanov. Soon their spacecraft Soyuz-18-2 successfully docked with the Salyut-4 orbital station. After returning to Earth, Klimuk began training under the Intercosmos program.
Third flight
During the third flight in June 1978, Pyotr Ilyich headed the international crew together with the Polish cosmonaut Germashevsky. The Soyuz-30 controlled by them successfully docked with the Salyut-6 station, on board which were Ivanchenkov and Kovalenok. This time Klimuk spent seven days in space. Its total flight experience is 78 days and 18 hours.
Out of space
Immediately after the third flight, Pyotr Ilyich was appointed head of the political department at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (CTC). Then Klimuk became deputy head. In 1983 he received additional education at the Lenin Military Political Academy (in absentia). And in 1987 he defended his Ph.D. thesis. For several years (from 1979 to 1984) he was a deputy at the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Order
Petr Klimuk, like other Belarusian cosmonauts, has several awards. He is a laureate of the USSR and RF State Prizes. Also Pyotr Ilyich was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of Merit for the Motherland, the Order of Friendship of Peoples and the Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal. Streets in cities such as Kletsk and Rogachev, as well as in the villages of Rubel, Nizhny Terebezhov and Motol, bear the name of Klimuk. In Brest, a bronze bust was installed for Pyotr Ilyich.
Vladimir Kovalenok
Any biography of Belarusian cosmonauts is remarkable, but the life story of this conqueror of the starry sky is perhaps the most interesting. Let's start with the fact that Kovalenok got into aviation at a very “green” age. But, as it turned out, 22 years is not an indicator. Vladimir became the main "screw" of the Soyuz-class spacecraft. On them, he conquered the stellar space three times.
Service start
Like all Belarusian cosmonauts, Kovalenok received good training at the military aviation school. After graduating in 1963, he went to work in the transport aviation. Vladimir flew the An-24 as a co-pilot. Over time, the young man was promoted to commander. In 1965, Kovalenok became a candidate for the cosmonaut corps. However, he was not credited, but left in reserve. The young man began his training course for a flight into space two years later.
First flight
In October 1977, Vladimir Vasilyevich made his first flight on the Soyuz-25. Kovalenok was the commander of the ship. The crew also included Vladimir Ryumin. According to the flight program, Soyuz was supposed to dock with the Salyut-6 station. But this did not happen due to the switching of the rendezvous system into an abnormal mode. The flight was terminated ahead of schedule. The total time spent in space was 2 days.
Second flight
It happened in 1978 and was much longer than the first one. Kovalenok was again the ship's commander. This time he was in charge of the Soyuz-29 crew. The planned docking with the Salyut-6 station was very successful. During their stay on it, the crew of Vladimir Vasilyevich received two international expeditions: the German-Soviet (Jen, Bykovsky) and the Polish-Soviet (Germashevsky, Klimuk). On July 29, Kovalenok together with Ivanchenko made an exit into the starry space. They were outside the ship for a little over two hours. On November 2, Vladimir Vasilyevich returned home in Soyuz-31. The total duration of the second trip was almost one hundred and forty days.
Flight three
This time Kovalenok headed the Soyuz T-4 spacecraft. The notorious Viktor Savinykh flew with him. And again they successfully docked with Salyut-6. Like last time, the cosmonauts hosted two international expeditions: the Romanian-Soviet (Prunariu, Popov) and the Mongolian-Soviet (Gurragchi, Dzhanibekov). The duration of this flight was almost seventy-five days.
Follow-up service
In 1984, Vladimir Vasilyevich successfully graduated from the Military Academy under the General Staff of the Armed Forces. After that, he received the post of deputy head of the 1st department of the Gagarin CTC, which was engaged in the training of cosmonauts. In connection with this appointment, he no longer took part in flights.
From 1989 to 1992 he worked as a people's deputy. In 1991 he became the head of the Belarusian Cosmonautics Federation. In 1993, Vladimir Vasilyevich was awarded the rank of Colonel General of Aviation. In 2001 he became the head of the Russian Federation of Cosmonautics. Released by age in June 2002.
Awards
We will conclude the story about the Belarusian cosmonaut Kovalenka by listing the orders he has. Vladimir Vasilievich has three Orders of Lenin, several Orders of Merit for the Motherland and Tsiolkovsky's gold medal. A bronze bust was installed in the city of Krupki (Minsk region) Kovalenka.
Oleg Novitsky
This name is not inferior in popularity to the two listed above. Oleg Novitsky is a Belarusian cosmonaut who headed the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft. The start was made in October 2012. This event became a reason for pride for all Belarusians. In 2007, Novitsky underwent general space training, receiving the highest score. Thus, he put forward his own candidacy for the next flight into starry space.
Oleg Novitsky is a Belarusian cosmonaut, whose biography is known to every inhabitant of his country. He set off to conquer the dark abyss immediately after celebrating his 41st birthday. People who know Oleg Viktorovich personally note his outward resemblance to Yuri Gagarin. Novitsky became the third Belarusian to see the planet from the other side. In the near future, the fourth conqueror of the black abyss will probably appear.
Undelivered
Belarusian cosmonauts Klimuk, Kovalyonok and Novitsky were able to fulfill their dream and visit the starry sky. But there were also those who failed to do this.
Boris Belousov
Was born in Khotimsk (Mogilev region) in 1930. Graduated from the Mozhaisky Air Force Academy in Leningrad. In 1965 he began to prepare for a flight into starry space. Soon he was made the senior of the cosmonaut corps. After successfully passing the state exam, Belousov was assigned to the Soyuz crew. There was very little left before the flight into space. The cherished dream was about to come true. But suddenly Belousov was expelled from the detachment. Boris was transferred to one of the military research institutes. The reason was that the credentials committee found a "dark spot" in the biography of his father-in-law.
Anatoly Dedkov
Was born in the village of Luchin (Gomel region) in 1944. Graduated from the Kharkov Military Aviation School. After that he was assigned to the cosmonaut corps. Having successfully passed the state exam, he was preparing for a flight on the Salyut orbital station and on the Soyuz spacecraft. In 1977, Dedkov was appointed commander of the 2nd crew on Salyut-6 and Soyuz-26. All plans were crossed out by the unsuccessful docking of the 1st crew, which included such Belarusian cosmonauts as Ryumin and Kovalenok. The order came from “above”: one crew member must have flight experience. This decision pushed Dedkov to the back of the line, which was filled with younger applicants every year.
Tester
For the next 6 years, Anatoly Ivanovich was engaged in testing space technology in extreme conditions. He tested aircraft in the ocean and uninhabited areas (taiga, jungle, desert). Dedkov also practiced spacewalk in the Orlan spacesuit and tested the Sokol spacesuit. He performed more than 50 spacecraft landings with a parachute of various difficulty levels. But the number of experiments (sometimes hazardous to health) did not help Anatoly Ivanovich go into space. As a result, he was taken to the Flight Control Center as the chief operator. Colonel Dedkov did not manage to become the third Belarusian to conquer the dark abyss.
Alexander Shchukin
Was born in 1946, in the city of Vienna (Wienn), Austria, in the family of a military man. Shchukin graduated from the school of test pilots, and after - the Moscow Institute of Aviation. Alexander read a lot about Belarusian cosmonauts and dreamed of conquering the starry space. As a result, Shchukin was sent to prepare for the Buran program, which was headed by Igor Volk. But Alexander's dream never came true. He crashed on a Su-26M while preparing for a holiday in Zhukovsky. On the indicated aircraft, Shchukin performed a training flight in order to test it in a spin. Unfortunately, Alexander was unable to take the plane out of this critical regime, and everything ended in tragedy.
The first of the sons of the Belarusian land to ascend into space is 70 today! ..
And on July 13, in his small homeland in the villages of Komarovka and Tomashovka, Brest region, celebrations will take place in his honor.
The celebration will be attended by his classmates, friends, diplomats ...
Among the gifts - an accordion, a portrait by Brest artist Sergei Kazak.
Pyotr Ilyich was born in a difficult time - July 10, 1942, in the peasant family of Ilya Fedorovich and Marfa Pavlovna Klimukov from the village of Komarovka, Brest region. He lost his father early, who died in one of the battles for the liberation of Poland in 1944. The family had three children, Antonina, Nina and Petya.
Mom dreamed that her son would become a civil engineer, and his stepfather, Mikhail Morozov, saw in Petra a future musician.
However, after graduating from high school, Peter made a different decision.
His sister advised him to become a military man.
- It was a difficult time, - recalls Antonina Ilyinichna Luschai. - But the military school was still a guarantee that you would be shod, clothed, fed. And my brother dreamed of becoming a pilot.
This idea appeared after an emergency landing near the village of a military fighter MIG-15. And so it all happened. But, of course, no one thought that he would become an astronaut.
In 1959, Peter entered the school for the initial training of pilots in Kremenchug. Then he is a cadet of the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School.
On April 12, 1961, the first spacecraft with Yuri Gagarin on board entered the Earth's orbit. It was a triumph. And the most significant event in the life of the cadets was the arrival of Yuri Gagarin and Andrian Nikolaev at the school.
After two years of service in the aviation fighter regiment in the North, in the fall of 1965, Pyotr Klimuk was enlisted in the cosmonaut corps ...
The first Belarusian cosmonaut rose to the stars on December 18, 1973. At 14:55 Moscow time, in accordance with the program of studies in near-earth space in the Soviet Union, the Soyuz-13 spacecraft was launched. Its crew consisted of the commander of the ship Major Petr Klimuk and flight engineer Valentin Lebedev.
Their flight lasted 7 days 20 hours 55 minutes 35 seconds. No one had been in space for so long before.
Talking about his first flight into space, Petr Klimuk admitted that all 8 days of the flight passed very quickly. "I flew to Baikonur as an understudy, the second crew, but it so happened that they appointed the first crew.", - the astronaut recalls.
By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the cosmonauts of Soyuz-13 were awarded the titles of pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR and Hero of the Soviet Union, each with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal ...
Twice more Klimuk was the commander of spaceships. "Soyuz-18" under his control docked in 1975 with the orbital scientific station "Salyut-4". Togetherwith flight engineer Vitaly Sevastyanov they spent almost 63 days in orbit.
And three years later, he launched Soyuz-30 into orbit with the Polish cosmonaut Miroslav Germashevsky. At that time, he was already a deputy of the Cosmonaut Training Center, and from 1991 to 2003 he headed it.
In space, Pyotr Ilyich Klimuk spent78 days 18 hours 18 minutes 42 seconds.
In 1978 a bronze bust twice Hero of the Soviet UnionPetr Klimuk was installed in Brest.
In 2000, n donkey of the third flight into space, bronze bustworks of the Minsk sculptor Ivan Miskoappeared in the village of Tomashovka, located near Komarovka.
On November 4, 1978, the school museum “Cosmos” was opened in Tomashovskaya secondary school along with the All-Union tour route “My Motherland - USSR”.
Petr Klimuk donated his personal belongings to the museum in the 80s. But it so happened that the museum was not guarded, and in August 2000, a space suit in which Pyotr Ilyich ascended into space, as well as a diving suit, gloves, a heat-protective suit and other things were stolen from it.
According to some reports, the trail of criminals led to Ukraine, to one of the private collections. But everything was done so professionally that no evidence and evidence of this crime could be collected.
After this incident, the museum was reconstructed. And now it is the only cosmonautics museum in Belarus.
On one of his visits to his homeland, Pyotr Ilyich brought a delegation from China here on an excursion.
He was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III and IV degrees, three Orders of Lenin, the Order For Service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces of the USSR, III degree, the Medal For Merit in Space Exploration, the Order For Service to the Motherland, II degree, the Order of Friendship peoples, the Tsiolkovsky gold medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Petr Klimuk is an honorary citizen of Brest and the Brest region. Streets in the cities of Kletsk and Rogachev, as well as in the villages of Motol Ivanovsky, Nizhny Terebezhov and Rubel of the Stolin districts are named after Klimuk.
Since July 21, 2004, the Colonel General of Aviation is in reserve. He is a welcome guest at home. Friends, fellow countrymen, classmates are looking forward to him on July 13 in the Brest region ...
Many summers, Pyotr Ilyich! Happy Birthday!
Born in the city of Cherven, Minsk region. In 1994 he graduated from the Borisoglebsk Aviation Training Center named after V.P. Chkalov, after which he served in the North Caucasian Military District. In 2004-2006 he studied at the Air Force Academy. Yu. A. Gagarin, then he was admitted to the post of candidate cosmonauts in the squadron of the Cosmonaut Training Center. In September 2012, he was approved as the commander of the prime crew of the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft, which launched on October 23, 2012 to the International Space Station, as part of the ISS-33 expedition.
Pyotr KLIMUK (born in 1942)
A native of the village of Komarovka, Brest region, Pyotr Klimuk became the first Belarusian to go into space. He was enlisted in the cosmonaut corps in 1965. He flew into space three times as a crew commander (for the first time - in December 1973). For the last time, in 1978, Klimuk, heading the international crew, together with Miroslav Germaszewski, the first cosmonaut in Poland, made docking with the Salyut-6 - Soyuz-29 orbital scientific complex. The total duration of his stay in space was 7 days 2 hours 2 minutes 59 seconds. Until 2003, he was the head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Vladimir KOVALENOK (born in 1942)
Born in the village of Beloe, Krupsky District, Minsk Region. In 1964 he was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps. He completed three space flights as a spacecraft commander (1977, 1978, 1981). The longest for Kovalenok was the second flight, when he spent 139 days in space. Also during this flight, he made a spacewalk for 2 hours 5 minutes. In total, he spent 216 days in space. Since 1992 - Head of the Military Aviation Technical University named after V.I. N.E. Zhukovsky in Moscow. Currently - President of the Russian Federation of Cosmonautics.
Valentina TERESHKOVA (born in 1937)
The world's first woman cosmonaut was born in the Yaroslavl region into a family of Belarusian peasants. The father was from the village of Vyilovo, Belynichsky district, Mogilev region, the mother was from the village of Eremeevshchina, Dubrovensky district. As Tereshkova herself said, as a child she spoke Belarusian. In 1962, she was among the five selected girls who were trained for a flight into space. She went into space on June 16, 1963, until now Tereshkova remains the only woman in the world who made a space flight alone. Since 2011 - Deputy of the State Duma of Russia from the United Russia party.
Valentin DANILOVICH (1936-1970)
Danilovich, a parachute and space technology tester, was the first person in the world to experience the state of weightlessness in a laboratory aircraft. Born in 1936 in the village of Kolodischi, Minsk region. In 1961 he tested and worked out the airlock and spacewalk system. To create zero gravity, a model of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft was installed in the laboratory plane.
We have enriched space exploration not only with astronauts. In 1650, a military engineer from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Kazimir Semyonovich published in Amsterdam the book "The Great Art of Artillery", which, among other things, considered the idea of \u200b\u200bjet propulsion in artillery. Semyon Kosberg, a native of Slutsk, developed a fuel that made it possible to develop a second space speed. Another native of Belarus, Boris Kit, was engaged in the development of fuel for the American Apollo spacecraft, the Shuttle shuttle spacecraft.