Soyuz 4

Crew

Vladimir Shatalov

Commander

Status: Retired
12/8/1927 -
Nationality: Soviet
Type: Government
First Flight: 1/14/1969
Last Flight: 4/22/1971

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Shatalov (Russian: Владимир Александрович Шаталов; born December 8, 1927) is a former Soviet cosmonaut who flew three space missions of the Soyuz programme: Soyuz 4, Soyuz 8, and Soyuz 10.

Shatalov was born in Petropavlovsk. From 1971 to 1987, he was Commander of Cosmonaut Training, and Director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre from then until 1991.

Quote: "When we look into the sky it seems to us to be endless. We breathe without thinking about it, as is natural... and then you sit aboard a spacecraft, you tear away from Earth, and within ten minutes you have been carried straight through the layer of air, and beyond there is nothing! The 'boundless' blue sky, the ocean which gives us breath and protects us from endless black and death, is but an infinitesimally thin film. How dangerous it is to threaten even the smallest part of this gossamer covering, this conserver of life."

Mission

Soyuz 4

Type: Human Exploration

Soyuz 4 mission started with the launch on January 14, 1969, 07:30:00 UTC, carrying Commander Vladimir Shatalov, Flight Engineer Aleksei Yeliseyev and Research Engineer Yevgeny Khrunov into orbit. Two days later mission achieved the first ever docking of two crewed spacecrafts, having Soyuz 4 docked with Soyuz 5 spacecraft. Since no connecting tunel had been developed yet, the two cosmonauts had to spacewalk from one vehicle to another. The mission concluded with a safe landing back on Earth on January 17, 1969, 06:50:47 UTC.

Location

31/6

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan

469 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.