Vladimir Alexandrovich Shatalov

Vladimir Alexandrovich Shatalov
Country:	Soviet Union
Organization:	WWS
Call sign:	Амур (" Amur "), Гранит (" granite ")
selected on	January 8, 1963
Calls:	3 space flights
Start of the first space flight:	January 14, 1969
Landing of the last space flight:	April 24, 1971
Time in space:	9d 21h 57min 30s
retired on	June 25, 1971
Space flights
Soyuz 4 (1969) Soyuz 8 (1969) Soyuz 10 (1971)

Wladimir Alexandrowitsch Schatalow ( Russian Владимир Александрович Шаталов , scientific transliteration Vladimir Aleksandrovič Šatalov ; born December 8, 1927 in Petropavlovsk , Kazakh ASSR , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ; † June 15, 2021 ) was a Soviet cosmonaut .

Life

Air Force

After Vladimir Shatalov had successfully completed the Air Force College in Katschinsk in 1949, he attended the Air Force Military Academy in Monino , which he left with distinction in 1956. He then served in the Soviet Air Force .

Cosmonaut activity

Selection and training

In the course of 1962, Shatalov went through the selection process for the second military group of Soviet cosmonauts. On January 8, 1963, he was accepted as a cosmonaut aspirant. He passed the final exam in January 1965 as one of the four best of the 15 candidates.

Replacement: Woschod 3

From March 1965 Schatalow trained for the command of Voschod 3 , with which the long-term record of Vostok 5 should be improved from 5 to 15 days. The nomination of Shatalov and Beregovoy as possible Vozhod commanders met with resistance from the members of the first cosmonaut group of the Soviet Union because not all of them had received a flight. The planned long-term flight from Woschod 3 was repeatedly postponed and ultimately never carried out.

Lunar program

In December 1966 the training groups of the Soviet cosmonauts were reorganized. Shatalov had hopes of becoming the replacement commander of one of the first manned flights of the new Soyuz spacecraft . However, after the Soyuz 1 crash and the death of pilot Vladimir Komarov , the project was delayed.

Replacement: Soyuz 3

The next manned space flight did not take place until October 1968 with Soyuz 3 , again with only one cosmonaut as a crew. Shatalov had been appointed as a substitute for Beregovoy for this mission .

First flight: Soyuz 4

In January 1969, Shatalov made his first space flight, he had been nominated as a crew of the Soyuz 4 spacecraft . Shatalov had chosen the Amur river as his call sign .

The first attempt at launch on January 13th was canceled because the temperature was too low (−24 ° C). However, the start succeeded the next day. One day later, Soyuz 5 took off with a three-man crew. After a rendezvous in orbit, Schatalow steered his spaceship to couple two manned spacecraft for the first time. Another first achievement was the transfer of Jelissejew and Chrunow from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4. Soyuz 4 landed with a crew of three on board. Despite the cold of −30 ° C and 60 to 80 cm of snow, the landing systems had worked well.

This was the first truly flawless mission in the Soyuz program. In contrast to Beregovoy, Shatalov had shown a flawless performance at Soyuz 3. He had carried out all maneuvers with minimal fuel consumption.

Second flight: Soyuz 6/7/8

After the successful double flight of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5, a triple flight with Soyuz 6 , Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 was planned. Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 should pair. In contrast to Soyuz 4/5, no change was planned. What was new was that the coupling maneuver was to be filmed from a third spaceship.

Since the originally planned Nikolayev did not convince in training, Shatalov moved up in August 1969 and was nominated as commander of Soyuz 8 in September . Alexei Yelissejew , with whom he had already worked on Soyuz 4/5, was assigned as a flight engineer .

Shatalov came as the second cosmonaut to Komarow for his second space flight as commander. In contrast to Komarov, he used a different callsign on his second flight than on the first: granite. Shatalov became commander of the spaceship association and also replacement commander of Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 7.

Shatalov spoke out in favor of a manual approach during preparation in order to save fuel. He couldn't enforce his posture, the approach should be controlled automatically.

Shatalov and Jelissejew started with Soyuz 8 on October 13, 1969, after Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 7 were already in space. The rendezvous initially went smoothly, but when their spaceship was only 1 km from Soyuz 7, the Igla approach system failed . Since there were no indications of the distance and movement of the spaceships, an approach by hand control was difficult and risky. Between October 14 and 16, Schatalow made several attempts to achieve a coupling, but was unsuccessful.

After landing on October 16, Schatalow was the most experienced cosmonaut with just under 8 days in space, but 16 US astronauts had more flight time to show.

Third flight: Soyuz 10

After the race to the moon was decided in favor of the United States, the Soviet Union focused on space stations in orbit. The first example of this was Salyut 1 .

Shatalov had been in command of a Salyut crew since April 1970, and his flight engineers were Pazayev and Volkov . In February 1971 Schatalow moved up as the commander of the first team. He replaced Schonin , who was no longer bearable due to his alcohol problems. In contrast to the usual practice, not the entire team was replaced, so Schatalow Schonins took over board engineers Jelissejew and Nikolai Rukawischnikow . Thus, for the third time, Shatalov was assigned to a mission together with Jelissejew.

Schatalow, Jelissejew and Rukavischnikow took off with the spacecraft Soyuz 10 on April 22, 1971 to the Salyut 1 space station, which had been in space for three days. The rendezvous with the space station initially went smoothly, but then the automatic proximity system failed again. This time the cosmonauts were able to use the hand control, and Schatalow carried out the first coupling of a spaceship to a space station.

Because the cosmonauts had no instrument support to determine the position and approach speed, the coupling did not take place at the correct angle. A transfer to the space station through the hatch was not possible, and the decoupling was only successful after several attempts. Due to the orbit, a landing in the Soviet Union was only possible at night during these days, so it was considered to go down on another continent. However, Schatalow was able to convince the flight control that the alignment of the spaceship was still possible. The landing took place on April 24, 1971 at 11.40 p.m. GMT, April 25 local time, shortly before sunrise.

This was the third flight each for Schatalow and Jelissejew, and that in just two years. At Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 they took off and landed together separately, and they carried out the Soyuz 8 flight together. Soviet space travel had a much larger selection of space travelers, and so it was rare that cosmonauts were deployed more than once. It was not until 1978 that another cosmonaut, Pyotr Klimuk, should come to the third space flight.

After the space flights

After his return Schatalow tried to get more influence on the training and selection of cosmonauts. His goal was to become Nikolai Kamanin's deputy , to which he was appointed on June 25, 1971, on the Soyuz 11 flight . When the Soyuz team was killed on their return, Kamanin resigned on July 8, 1971 and transferred his position to Shatalov.

From January 3, 1987, Shatalov succeeded Georgi Beregowoi as head of the Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut training center . He held this position until September 19, 1991. On May 21, 1992, Vladimir Shatalov resigned from active military service with the rank of Lieutenant General of the Air Force.

further activities

From 1971 to 1991 Shatalov was a member of the Soviet State Commission for Manned Spaceflight. He is the author and co-author of several space travel books.

Honors (selection)

• Twice Hero of the Soviet Union : January 22, 1969 and October 22, 1969
• Triple bearer of the Order of Lenin : January 22, 1969, April 30, 1971 and January 15, 1976
• Aviation cosmonaut of the Soviet Union (1969)
• State Prize of the USSR (1971)
• Order of the October Revolution (1982)

Schatalow also received other awards from Bulgaria, the GDR, Cuba, Mongolia, Austria, Syria, Czechoslovakia and Vietnam.

The Shatalov crater on the back of the moon is named after him.

Private

Shatalov was married and had two children. At the time of his death, Schatalow was the oldest living space traveler at the age of 93 years and 6 months.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Скончался летчик-космонавт СССР Владимир Шаталов
2. ↑ Shatalov. In: Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. International Astronomical Union, accessed October 15, 2010 . 

literature

• Peter Stache: spaceman from A to Z . Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic , Berlin [East] 1988, ISBN 3-327-00527-3 .

Web links

Commons : Vladimir Shatalov  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• spacefacts.de: Short biography
• Vladimir Alexandrowitsch Schatalow in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)