CCCP

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

This astronaut is in the top 5% for number of space walks.

Frequent Walker

Leonid Denisovich Kizim was born on August 5, 1941, in Krasny Lyman, Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. He graduated from the Kachinsk Air Force Pilot School in 1963 and later from the Gagarin Air Force Academy in 1969. Kizim served as a pilot and flight instructor in the Soviet Air Force, eventually achieving the rank of Colonel-General. Selected as a cosmonaut in 1965, he flew on three space missions: Soyuz T-3, Soyuz T-10, and Soyuz T-15. Over his career, he logged 374 days, 17 hours, and 56 minutes in space, contributing significantly to long-duration spaceflight research. Kizim retired from the cosmonaut corps in 1987 and later worked in various capacities within the Russian space program until his death on June 14, 2010.

Soyuz T-15

This was the first expedition to the under-construction Mir space station and the final crew mission to the Salyut 7 station. It is the first time a single mission visited more that one space station. The crew became the first to dock to and enter Mir and spent 55 days unloading two back-to-back cargo missions and activating and checking on Mir's systems. Two months into their mission, the crew undocked from Mir and made a 29-hour flight to the Salyut 7 space station. The crew spent two months on Salyut 7, performed two spacewalks, and collected equipment and experiments from the station to take back to Mir. The crew undocked from Salyut 7 on June 25th for the 29-hour flight back to Mir. This was the final flight of the Soyuz T variant.

Soyuz is a human-carrying capsule built and operated by Russia, capable of transporting up to three people to the Space Station at a time. It has been upgraded numerous times since its first use in the 1960s for the Soviet lunar program and was the only crewed vehicle for the Station from 2011 to 2020.

Soyuz

Soyuz T-10

Soyuz T-10 was the second Soyuz T-10 mission after the aborted launch attempt on the prior flight. The mission took three people to the Salyut 7 space station as the Mayak crew. They performed three spacewalks to fix a broken fuel line outside the station and returned to Earth on Soyuz T-11 after eight months in space.

Soyuz T-3

Soyuz T-3 brought the fifth resident crew of Salyut 6 to and from the station. It marked the first three-person resident crew of Salyut 6. The purpose of the flight was to test the Soyuz T spacecraft and perform maintenance on Salyut 6.

Leonid Kizim

USSR

Salyut 7PE-3 EVA 3

Salyut 7PE-3 EVA 4

Salyut 7PE-3 EVA 5

Salyut 7PE-3 EVA 6

Salyut 7PE-6 EVA 2

Salyut 7PE-3 EVA 1

Salyut 7PE-3 EVA 2

Salyut 7PE-6 EVA 1

Roscosmos

This astronaut is in the top 5% for number of missions.

Frequent Flyer

Soyuz T-8

Soyuz T-8 was a planned flight to the Salyut 7 space station that was aborted after a failed docking attempt.

Soyuz T-10-1

Soyuz T-10-1 was the first of two Soyuz T-10 missions. Just 90 seconds before liftoff, the Soyuz-U rocket caught fire. The control teams sent commands for Soyuz T-10 to abort off the top of the rocket and carry the two-person crew safely away. But the manual command never reached the rocket as communication lines had already burned through at the pad. The Soyuz T-10-1 crew could not manually activate the abort system. An emergency radio command was sent after several seconds as two people in the control room had to receive the same order and enter the same command into the computer within five seconds to send the command. Soyuz T-10-1's Launch Escape Tower fired to pull the crew away from the rocket, which exploded six seconds later. The crew experienced 17 Gs of acceleration during the abort but landed safely 4 km from the burning launch pad.

Soyuz T-11

India

This was a visitation and Soyuz vehicle swap mission that brought the first Indian to space. The week-long flight performed Earth observations as well as materials and life science experiments. The crew returned to Earth on Soyuz T-10.

Soyuz TM-10

Soyuz TM-10 took the EO-7 long duration crew to Space Station Mir. While on the station the crew oversaw the addition of the Kvant-2 module. The flight returned to Earth with Japanese reporter Toyohiro Akiyama, who launched on Soyuz TM-11.

Soyuz TM-21

This mission ferried part of the EO-18 crew to Space Station Mir. It was the first Russian flight of the Shuttle-Mir Program, a lead-up to the International Space Station. Upon reaching orbit, this marked the first time 14 people were in space at the same time: three on Soyuz, three on Mir, and seven on Shuttle Endeavour's on-going STS-67 mission. The final EO-18 crewmember was an American astronaut who was delivered to Mir by Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-71.

Gennadi Strekalov

Russia

Vladimir Solovyov

Oleg Atkov

Soyuz 12

Soyuz 12 marked the Return To Flight mission of Soyuz after the fatal in-space accident of Soyuz 11. The two-person mission was the first to resume Soviet use of full pressure suits on launch and landing. The flight was a two-day test to validate safety improvements to the Soyuz.

Soyuz 18a

Soyuz 18a was the first Soyuz 18 mission. Launched on April 5th, the mission ended in the first in-flight abort of a human space mission. At 4 minutes 48 seconds into launch, at an altitude of 146 km, the Soyuz rocket launching the mission failed to fully separate its first and second stages. The stages finally tore apart as the second stage engine ignited, but that event threw the second stage off course. The Soyuz 11 spacecraft's onboard computers detected the deviation and activated the abort systems to pull itself and its two-person crew free from the failing rocket. Because the rocket was failing to keep itself pointed in the correct direction, Soyuz 11's abort engines fired when the craft was pointing toward the ground. The accelerated descent imparted 21 Gs of force onto the crew instead of the certified 15 Gs for Soyuz aborts. Despite the increased speed and force, Soyuz 11's parachute deployed and unfurled as designed. Twenty-one minutes after launch, it landed thousands of kilometers away from its launch site on a steep incline. The capsule tumbled down the embankment. Its still-attached parachute caught on a tree and the capsule jerked to a stop just meters from a 152 m plunge into a gorge. The crew were in contact with recovery forces within minutes but the steep terrain meant they had to spend the night in the capsule enduring -7 C temperatures. They were rescued the following day. Lazarev was injured in the abort and landing; he never flew again. Makarov went on to fly two more missions. The mission's failure was disclosed to NASA as part of inter-agency preparations for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program mission just a few months away.

Soyuz 27

This mission to the Salyut 6 space station was a visitation flight where one Soyuz crew would visit an ongoing, long duration mission and them leave a new Soyuz craft. Instead of returning in the same Soyuz they launched in, the Soyuz 27 crew returned home in Soyuz 26.

Get the Supercluster App

Donate to Support Supercluster

Supercluster on Patreon

Fact of the Day

Want more space stories?

GET THE SUPERCLUSTER APP

THE SUPERCLUSTER PODCAST

Donate to support

The Supercluster App

Featuring our global Launch Tracker, interactive Astronaut Database, and Stations Dashboard.

Stay on top of everything leaving Earth; get mission info, countdowns, livestreams, and customized notifications that alert you when a rocket is launching or when a space station is in the skies overhead.

Download