Stargazing Guy

Follow for a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays.

Maybe you share a birthday?!

If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?!

If you do share a birthday, what does it mean to you?

Do you feel a connection, pride? They take to the skies (on controlled explosions) to improve the world, to explore (to travel to strange new worlds).

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1 January 1942 Gennadi Sarafanov (RKA) Russia.

1 January 1947 Vladimir Titov (RKA) Russia. Titov participated in five missions in total, including the failed flight of the Soyuz T-10-1 or T-10a mission, on 27 September 1983. One minute before launch flames engulfed the rocket of Titov (and Strekalov); the Soyuz descent module was fired from the launch escape system, and the cosmonauts landed safely over two miles from the launch vehicle, which had exploded seconds after the Soyuz separated. Though exposed to a force of 20-Gs, neither Titov or Strekalov sustained any injuries in the five and a half minute flight.

1 January 1956 Sergei Avdeyev (RKA) Russia.

1 January 1959 Abdul Mohmand (IK) Afghanistan. Momand’s parents, like many Afghans, did not know the exact date he was born and hence indicated his date of birth as the first day of the year. Mohmand became the first Afghan to journey to outer space. He became a crew member of Soyuz TM-6 and Soyuz TM-5 and spent nine days aboard the Mir space station between 29 August and 7 September 1988 as an Intercosmos Research Cosmonaut.

3 January 1959 Fyodor Yurchikhin (RKA) Georgia.

4 January 1970 Christopher Cassidy (NASA) US.

6 January 1933 Oleg Makarov (RKA) Russia.

6 January 1948 Guy Gardner (NASA) US.

6 January 1957 Colin Michael Foale (NASA) England. During a 26-year career with NASA, he flew six space missions and accrued more than 373 days in orbit. His achievement was recognized with a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) award in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List in December 2004.

6 January 1963 Philippe Perrin (ESA) Morocco.

7 January 1935 Valeri Kubasov (RKA) Russia. Kubasov was a cosmonaut who flew on two missions in the Soyuz programme as a flight engineer: Soyuz 6 (launched 11 October 1969) and Soyuz 19 (the Apollo–Soyuz mission – launched 15 July 1975), and commanded Soyuz 36 (launched 26 May 1980) in the Intercosmos programme. He evaded death twice during his space career. He was part of the crew that was originally intended to fly Soyuz 2, which was found to have the same faulty parachute sensor that resulted in Vladimir Komarov’s death on Soyuz 1 and was later launched without a crew. Later, he was grounded for medical reasons before the Soyuz 11 flight, which killed the crew when the capsule was accidentally depressurised by a faulty valve.

7 January 1941 Frederick D. Gregory (NASA) US.

7 January 1951 Talgat Musbayev (RKA) Kazakhstan.

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Thanks to www.supercluster.com for the bios and links.

Also, thanks to www.pillownaut.com for the initial list of birthdays, and the many, many resources on the internet, especially Wikipedia and NASA.      

* = includes cosmonaut, taikonaut, parastronaut, spaceflight participant, space tourist, etc

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PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

Remember, hope lives here.

Contact Stargazing Guy for any copyright-related requests or queries @ stargazer1@stargazingguy.co.uk