The curiosity of Soviet cosmonautics: Why did the last cosmonaut of the USSR flew from one country, and returned to another

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Unfortunately, the hero of the Soviet Union and Russia, Sergei Krikalev, did not receive such world fame as Yuri Gagarin or Valentina Tereshkova. Even not all Russians know about the existence of such an astronaut and about his interesting biography. Meanwhile, for ten years, he was the Earth's record holder for the longest total time spent in space. And he also unwittingly became the only cosmonaut who went into orbit from the Soviet Union, and returned when the USSR had already disintegrated.

He was calm and knew he would return soon

A mechanical engineer by training, Sergei Krikalev began preparing for space flights in 1988. His first flight was very long - it lasted six months.

The second time he was sent into space in May 1991, together with his compatriot Anatoly Artsebarsky and Helen Sharman from Great Britain. Interestingly, their foreign "colleague" was not a professional cosmonaut. Once Mikhail Gorbachev, when meeting with Margret Thatcher, promised the Prime Minister that the USSR would send a British cosmonaut into space. Thatcher immediately organized a competition at home, in which Helen Sharman, an engineer at the Mars confectionery factory, won. They began to prepare her for the flight. Our country with a broad gesture launched a foreign woman into space on a Soyuz carrier rocket at its own expense. By the way, Helen spent only seven days in orbit.

As she later recalled, on "Mir" Krikaldev always looked calm and focused, and there was a feeling that he felt at home in orbit. Even in the most difficult situations (for example, when there were problems with docking), he maintained his composure and looked confident. And he was very fond of weightlessness …

Initially, it was planned that Krikalev would stay in space for only five months (while performing six spacewalks with Artsebarsky), however, everything turned out differently: Sergei had to "stay" in orbit for several more months. Thus, he returned home only after 311 days. One can only guess what a person experiences when he is determined to return to Earth, and he is faced with the fact: they say, fly some more. How many? Unknown.

Krikalev went into space as a citizen of the USSR, and when he returned, the Soviet Union no longer existed. He flew away, being a Leningrader, and flew in - a resident of St. Petersburg. The 1991 coup took place while Sergei was in space. The cosmonaut learned about this and other significant events in the USSR (for example, that in December 1991 Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president) from the "earthlings".

Why did it happen?

Some media outlets wrote that the "suddenly impoverished" Soviet Union had no money to return the Soviet cosmonaut home, or that he was simply "forgotten in space." Of course it is not. When, after the collapse of the USSR, "Baikonur" went to Kazakhstan, the head of the former Soviet republic and the newly independent state, Nursultan Nazarbayev, demanded that a citizen of his country be sent into space.

In order not to spoil political relations and for a number of reasons, the Kazakh Toktar Aubakirov, an excellent test pilot, but, alas, had no "space" practice, was hastily prepared for the flight. Astronaut Franz Viebeck from Austria (also not experienced in space flights) flew second under the program, and the spacecraft commander, pilot-cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, was the third.

It was planned to return Sergey to Earth on October 2, 1991. A Soyuz docked to the Mir station, in which Aubakirov, Fibek and Volkov were delivered. Since two of them - Aubakirov and Fibek - had no experience in space flight, a week later they were returned back, and Volkov, with whom Krikalev, by the way, was already in space during his first flight, remained in orbit. Instead of him, Artsebarsky returned to Earth with foreigners, but there was simply no free space for Krikalev.

At that time, no one could say exactly when the next ship would leave for the station. Sergei remained at Mir indefinitely, seriously risking his health. And here even such a confident and imperturbable astronaut, like him, began to doubt whether he could cope. He later admitted to the media that he was not sure if he had enough strength to survive until the end of the program.

As for finance, they only partially caused the postponement. There was indeed a financial crisis in the country and it was too costly to return two cosmonauts. However, there was a capsule on board that Krikalev and Volkov could use to return to Earth. But the whole catch was that if they had left Mir ahead of time, the station would have remained empty and there would have been no one to service it. For both, the choice turned out to be obvious: to stay and wait for the Earth to have the opportunity to replace them. And they stayed and continued to work. In particular, they made a spacewalk, which lasted more than four hours.

“We had to save our astronautics, so I stayed at the station,” Sergei later said in an interview.

Return from the USSR to Russia

Home Krikalev and Volkov returned only at the end of March 1992. They landed on the territory of Kazakhstan near the city of Arkalyk. A group of four people helped the last Soviet cosmonaut and, in fact, the last citizen of the USSR to get off the Soyuz spacecraft. He was pale as chalk, and beads of sweat covered his face. One man fanned his face with a handkerchief, and the second served him hot broth …

As if a guest from the past had arrived in a time machine, Sergei had a stripe on his sleeve - the Soviet flag and the letters “USSR”.

After recovering from the flight, Krikalev gradually returned to training, and then began to prepare for the next space trip - already on the Shuttle. He became a member of the Russian-American team, thus becoming the first Russian cosmonaut to fly on an American spacecraft.

During the entire period of his stay in space, Krikalev circled our planet five thousand times, and in total for all his six flights (later there were others) he stayed in space for 803 days. No one could break this record until 2015.

Now Sergey Krikalev is 61 years old, he is seriously involved in sports and scientific activities.

Continuing the topic, read about why the first woman in outer space Svetlana Savitskaya became a forgotten hero