Cosmonaut Valeri Kubasov twice Hero of the Soviet Union and participant of the famous Apollo-Soyuz program died on Wednesday evening at the age of 79, – RSC Energia reports.
Kubasov graduated from Moscow Aviation Institute in 1958, in 1966 he became a member of cosmonauts corps and remained there up to 1993.
Kubasov performed 3 space flights. The first one was in 1969, the first flight in the framework of 3 spacecrafts group flight. That time he was Soyuz-6 flight engineer. During this flight first experiments on welding in space was conducted.
The second flight Kubasov performed being Soyuz-19 spacecraft flight engineer together with Alexey Leonov from July 15 to July 21, 1975. In course of the flight Soviet spacecraft Soyuz-19 and USA Apollo docked on the orbit for the first time.
The 3rd flight according to Soviet-Hungarian mission to Salut-6 station took place in 1980; Kubasov was Soyuz-36 spacecraft commander.
Kubasov was given a title of Hero of the Soviet Union twice, he was also awarded 3 with Orders of Lenin, Golden Star medals of Hero of Hungary and medal for the merits in the field of space exploration.
Farewell ceremony will take place on February 22, – RSC Energia reports.
