The sixth man to orbit the Earth, Pavel Romanovich Popovich
died Wednesday, five days before his 79th birthday. According to officials in
Russia, his death came following a stroke at a hospital in Gurzuf on Ukraine's
Crimean Peninsula.
"Pavel was a wonderful person," recalled first
woman in space Valentina Tereshkova, in an interview with RIA Novosti.
"A professional
cosmonaut, devoted to his work, and he was also a good friend."
The first to be chosen among the Soviet Union's original 20
cosmonaut candidates, Popovich was considered for the country's -- and world's
-- first spaceflight, which was ultimately flown by Yuri Gagarin. Instead, he
served as capcom for Vostok 1, conveying commands between the ground and
Gagarin in space.
Popovich's own first flight came more than a year later in
August 1962 aboard Vostok 4. Originally slated for launch as much as nine
months earlier, his solo orbital flight was re-planned in an effort to further
the Space Race, topping the planned efforts by the United States to launch John
Glenn on America's first orbital mission in late 1961.
Although he still launched alone onboard the one-seater
spacecraft, Popovich was not the only cosmonaut in orbit on August 12, 1962.
Waiting for him was Vostok 3 pilot
Andrian Nikolayev, who launched the day before, marking the first time two
manned vehicles were in space at the same time.
Although they would come within about 3 miles (5 km) of each
other, close enough to see each other's spacecraft, their mission was not to
rendezvous, as was incorrectly assumed by press reports. The Vostok capsules
were not equipped to maneuver. Instead, the tandem flights were aimed at
learning how to manage concurrent missions while further studying the effects
of extended spaceflight on the human body.
Nikolayev remained in orbit nearly four days, setting yet another
record for the Soviet Union. Popovich might have also flown for four days
had it not been for his Vostok
failing to maintain its interior temperature, leading to the decision to land
after three days.
Popovich himself almost brought his mission to an early end
when he reported seeing "thunderstorms," a pre-set codeword he was to
use to signal that he was ill. While the ground scrambled in response, Popovich
realized his error and radioed to report that he was fine and had really seen
lightning over the Gulf of Mexico.
Popovich returned to Earth, ejecting from Vostok 4 and
parachuting to the ground as was planned, on August 15, 1962. He successfully
completed 48 orbits of the Earth.
It would be more than a decade before he would return to
space, in large part due to the failed Soviet effort toward landing cosmonauts
on the Moon. Assigned to command one of the lunar missions, Popovich trained
for the moon from 1966 through 1968 before being reassigned to fly to the
Soviet Union's first military space station in the wake of the lunar program being
disbanded.
Popovich's second spaceflight was further delayed when its
target, disguised by the civilian name Salyut 2, failed in orbit, losing
pressure, flight control and eventually all of its power before reentering in
1973.
Finally on July 3, 1974, Popovich lifted off as commander
aboard Soyuz 14, a 16-day mission to what was the first Almaz manned military
station, Salyut 3. Together with Yuri Artyukhin, Popovich tested the use of the
outpost as a reconnaissance platform using 14 different cameras.
Popovich returned to Earth for the second and last time on
July 19, 1974, logging a career total of just under 19 days in orbit as the
first ethnic Ukrainian to fly in space.
Popovich remained involved in space exploration beyond his
own missions. For nine years beginning in 1980, he served as deputy chief of
the cosmonaut training center at Star City, Russia, where he had been the first to
report twenty years earlier.
In the late 1980s, Popovich was appointed director for the
Russian Institute for Land Ecosystem Monitoring, which develops remote sensing
satellites for land management and agriculture.
"I was able to look out of my porthole a lot, and like
anyone who looks at the planet from space I realized -- I am convinced -- that
the Earth is not the property of any one person or country," recounted
Popovich for the 2007 book "Into That Silent Sea"
by Colin Burgess and Francis French. "It belongs to us all."
A decorated Major General in the Russian Air Force, he was
twice awarded as Hero of the Soviet Union. Popovich lived to see his name lent
to an Antarctica mountain ridge and an asteroid.
He is survived by his wife Alevtina Oshegova and two
daughters from a former marriage.
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