Soyuz T-15

Leonid Kizim

• Birthday: 08/05/1941
• Role: Commander
• Nationality: Russian
• First Flight: 11/27/1980
• Last Flight: 03/13/1986

Leonid Denisovich Kizim (Кизим Леонид Денисович) (August 5, 1941 – June 14, 2010) was a Soviet cosmonaut.

He was selected as a cosmonaut on October 23, 1965. Kizim flew as Commander on Soyuz T-3, Soyuz T-10 and Soyuz T-15, and also served as backup commander for Soyuz T-2. All together he spent 374 days 17 hours 56 minutes in space. On Soyuz T-15, he was part of the only crew to visit two space stations on one spaceflight (Mir and Salyut 7).

Vladimir Solovyov

• Birthday: 11/11/1946
• Role: Flight Engineer
• Nationality: Russian
• First Flight: 02/08/1984
• Last Flight: 03/13/1986

Vladimir Alekseyevich Solovyov (Russian: Влади́мир Алексе́евич Соловьёв; born 11 November 1946) is a former Soviet cosmonaut.

He was selected as a cosmonaut on 1 December 1978 and flew as Flight Engineer on Soyuz T-10 and Soyuz T-15, spending a total of 361 days, 22 hours, 49 minutes in space. His first flight, Soyuz T-10, took off on 8 February 1984, to join Salyut 7. The crew spent ten months (nearly 237 days) performing numerous medical and space manufacturing experiments. They came down aboard Soyuz T-11 on 2 October 1984. Solovyov’s second flight was aboard Soyuz T-15, taking off on 13 March 1986 and coming back aboard the same craft on 16 July 1986, 125 days later. During the T-15 mission, the crew transferred equipment from Salyut-7 to the new Mir space station; they were the last aboard the former and the first aboard the latter.

Soyuz T-15

• Type: Human Exploration
• Orbit: Low Earth Orbit

Soyuz T-15 was the last mission to visit the Salyut 7 space station and the first to visit the Mir space station. The mission began on March 13, 1986, 12:33:09 UTC, launching Commander Leonid Kizim and Flight Engineer Volodimir Solovyov into orbit. They docked with Mir two days later. During their stay there, crew tested station’s systems and were visited by two Progress cargo spacecrafts. On May 5, 1986, 12:12:09 UTC crew undocked from Mir and docked with Salyut the next day. There they collected experiments results, instruments and performed two EVAs. On June 25 crew undocked from Salyut 7 and returned to Mir the next day.
The mission concluded with a safe landing back on Earth on July 16, 1986, 12:34:05 UTC.

1/5

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan

1/5 has witnessed the launch of 487 rockets, including 487 orbital launch attempts, while Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan, has been the site for 1547 rocket launches.

Soviet Space Program Soyuz-U2

The Soyuz-U2 was a Soviet, later Russian, carrier rocket. It was derived from the Soyuz-U, and a member of the R-7 family of rockets. It featured increased performance compared with the baseline Soyuz-U, due to the use of syntin propellant, as opposed to RP-1 paraffin, used on the Soyuz-U.

Soviet Space Program

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.