Soyuz 13

Crew

Valentin Lebedev

Flight Engineer

Status: Retired
4/14/1942 -
Nationality: Russian
Type: Government
First Flight: 12/18/1973
Last Flight: 5/13/1982

Valentin Vitalyevich Lebedev (Russian: Валентин Витальевич Лебедев; born April 14, 1942 in Moscow) was a Soviet cosmonaut who made two flights into space. His stay aboard the Space Station Salyut 7 with Anatoly Berezovoy in 1982, which lasted 211 days, was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records.

Pyotr Klimuk

Commander

Status: Retired
7/10/1942 -
Nationality: Belarusian
Type: Government
First Flight: 12/18/1973
Last Flight: 6/27/1978

Pyotr Ilyich Klimuk (Belarusian: Пётр Ільіч Кліму́к; Russian: Пётр Ильич Климу́к; born 10 July 1942) is a former Soviet cosmonaut and the first Belarusian to perform space travel. Klimuk made three flights into space.

Klimuk attended the Leninski Komsomol Chernigov High Aviation School and entered the Soviet Air Force in 1964. The following year, he was selected to join the space programme.

His first flight was a long test flight on Soyuz 13 in 1973. This was followed by a mission to the Salyut 4 space station on Soyuz 18 in 1975.

From 1976 he became involved in the Intercosmos and made his third and final spaceflight on an Intercosmos flight with Polish cosmonaut Mirosław Hermaszewski on Soyuz 30.

Mission

Soyuz 13

Type: Human Exploration

Soyuz 13 launched on 18 December 1973, 11:55:00 UTC. It carried commander Pyotr Klimuk and flight engineer Valentin Lebedev into orbit. This mission was the second test flight of the modified Soyuz spacecraft. Crew spent 7 deays in orbit and carried out various astrophysical studies. They also obtained ultraviolet spectrograms of stars with the help of an Orion 2 Space Observatory onboard the spacecraft. Crew returned to Earth, landing on 26 December 1973, 08:50:35 UTC.

Location

1/5

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan

468 rockets have launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan.

Rocket

Soyuz

The Soyuz rocket has been launched a total of 32 times with 30 successful and 2 failed launches.

Agency

Soviet Space Program

Type: Government
Abbreviation: CCCP

Founded: 1931

Country: RUS

The Soviet space program, was the national space program of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) actived from 1930s until disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Soviet Union’s space program was mainly based on the cosmonautic exploration of space and the development of the expandable launch vehicles, which had been split between many design bureaus competing against each other. Over its 60-years of history, the Russian program was responsible for a number of pioneering feats and accomplishments in the human space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). Further notable records included the first interplanetary probes: Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly by Venus and Mars, respectively, Venera 3 and Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface, and Venera 7 and Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets.