Yevgeny Vasilyevich Khrunov
Yevgeny Vasilyevich Khrunov was a Soviet Air Force officer and cosmonaut whose single spaceflight helped prove early Soyuz docking and crew-transfer techniques. He launched on Soyuz 5, transferred externally to Soyuz 4, and returned aboard a different spacecraft than the one that carried him to orbit.
- Born
- September 10, 1933
- Died
- May 20, 2000
- Birthplace
- Prudy, Tula Oblast,Soviet Union
Flights
1
Spacewalks
1
EVA time
37 minutes
In space
1 day, 23 hours, 45 minutes
Bio
Khrunov trained as a military pilot before selection in the 1963 Soviet Air Force cosmonaut group. His assignments placed him in the early Soyuz period, when the Soviet program was still testing , docking, transfer, and lunar-mission techniques.
Soyuz 5 launched in January 1969 with Boris Volynov, Khrunov, and Aleksei Yeliseyev. After docking with Soyuz 4, Khrunov and Yeliseyev performed an EVA transfer between the spacecraft because the docking system did not yet include an internal tunnel.
The flight lasted less than two days for Khrunov, but it became one of the central operational demonstrations of the early Soyuz program. The transfer rehearsed techniques relevant to Soviet lunar plans and helped shape later crew-transfer and docking procedures.