Valery Ilyich Rozhdestvensky
Valery Ilyich Rozhdestvensky was a Soviet Navy engineer, deep-sea diving officer, and cosmonaut who flew on Soyuz 23 in 1976. His only spaceflight became famous not for reaching Salyut 5, but for surviving the only unintentional water landing of a crewed Soviet spacecraft.
- Born
- February 13, 1939
- Died
- August 31, 2011
- Birthplace
- Leningrad,Soviet Union
Flights
1
Spacewalks
N/A
EVA time
N/A
In space
2 days, 6 minutes
Bio
Rozhdestvensky was born in Leningrad and trained as a naval engineer. Before cosmonaut selection, he commanded a deep-sea diving unit in the Baltic Sea Fleet, giving him technical and survival experience unusual among early Soviet space crews.
Soyuz 23 launched with Vyacheslav Zudov for a planned Salyut 5 mission, but a docking-system malfunction forced the crew to abandon the station approach. The mission lasted just over two days and ended in a landing on frozen Lake Tengiz during a blizzard.
The recovery was dangerous: the was dragged partly under water by its parachute and the crew waited for hours in freezing conditions before rescue. Rozhdestvensky later worked at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and retired from the program in 1986.