Soviet cosmonaut (born 1942)
Pyotr Ilyich Klimuk (; ; born 10 July 1942) is a former Soviet cosmonaut and the first Belarusian to perform space travel. Klimuk made three flights into space. From 1991 to 2003, he headed the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Life.
Klimuk attended the Leninski Komsomol Chernigov High Aviation School and entered the Soviet Air Force in 1964. The following year, he was selected to join the space programme.
His first flight was a long test flight on Soyuz 13 in 1973. This was followed by a mission to the Salyut 4 space station on Soyuz 18 in 1975.
From 1976 he became involved in the Intercosmos and made his third and final spaceflight on an Intercosmos flight with Polish cosmonaut Mirosław Hermaszewski on Soyuz 30 in 1978.
He resigned from the cosmonaut team in 1978 to take up a position as the Assistant to the Chief of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1991 he was promoted to Chief of that facility and remained in that post until retirement in 2003.
Klimuk is a graduate of the Gagarin Air Force Academy and the Lenin Military-Political Academy.
He is the author of two books on human spaceflight: "Beside the Stars", and "Attack on Weightlessness".
References.
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