Valeri Kubasov

Valeri Nikolayevich Kubasov (Вале́рий Никола́евич Куба́сов; born 7 January 1935) is a former Soviet cosmonaut who flew on two missions in the Soyuz programme as a flight engineer: Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 19 (the Apollo-Soyuz mission), and commanded Soyuz 36 in the Intercosmos programme. On 21 July 1975, the Soyuz 7K-TM module used for ASTP landed in Kazakhstan at 5:51 p.m. and Kubasov was the first to exit the craft.

He was also involved in the development of the Mir space station. He retired from the Soviet space program in March 1993. He was later deputy director of RKK Energia.

Kubasov seems to have cheated 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.

He was awarded:
 * Twice Hero of the Soviet Union
 * Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR
 * Three Orders of Lenin
 * Medal "For Merit in Space Exploration"
 * Medal "Veteran of Labour"
 * Gold medal of the Tsiolkovsky Academy of Sciences of the USSR
 * Gold Medal Yuri Gagarin
 * Hero of the Hungarian People's Republic
 * Gold medal "For Merit in the Development of Science and Humanity" (Czechoslovakia)
 * Medal "People's Technicist" (Yugoslavia)