Soyuz TM-8

Aleksandr Viktorenko

• Birthday: 03/29/1947
• Role: Commander
• Nationality: Russian
• First Flight: 07/22/1987
• Last Flight: 10/03/1994

Aleksandr Stepanovich Viktorenko (Александр Степанович Викторенко) was a Soviet cosmonaut. He was born in Olginka, North-Kazakhstan Oblast, Kazakh SSR on March 29, 1947. He is married with two children.

He was selected as a cosmonaut on March 23, 1978, and retired on May 30, 1997. During his active career he had been Commander of Soyuz TM-3, Soyuz TM-8, Soyuz TM-14 and Soyuz TM-20. He has spent a total of 489 days in space.

Aleksandr Serebrov

• Birthday: 02/15/1944
• Role: Flight Engineer
• Nationality: Russian
• First Flight: 08/19/1982
• Last Flight: 07/01/1993

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Serebrov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Серебро́в, February 15, 1944 – November 12, 2013) was a Soviet cosmonaut. He graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (1967), and was selected as a cosmonaut on December 1, 1978. He retired on May 10, 1995.
He flew on Soyuz T-7, Soyuz T-8, Soyuz TM-8 and Soyuz TM-17. He was one of very few cosmonauts to fly for both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation that followed it. He held the record for most spacewalks, 10, until Anatoly Solovyev surpassed it. In all, Serebrov spent 371.95 days in space. Serebrov contributed to the design of Salyut 6, Salyut 7, and the Mir space stations.

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.