Anatoly Solovyev

Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyev (Анатолий Яковлевич Соловьёв; born January 16, 1948, in Riga - alternate spelling "Solovyov") is a retired Russian and Soviet cosmonaut and pilot. Solovyev holds the world record on the number of spacewalks performed (16), and accumulated time spent spacewalking (over 82 hours).

Career
Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyev served from 1972 to 1976 as a senior pilot and group commander in the Far Eastern Military District. Since August 1976, he has been a student-cosmonaut at the Yuri A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. In January 1979, he completed general space training. He is a test pilot third class and a test cosmonaut. From 1979 to 1984, he underwent training for a flight aboard the Soyuz-T transport vehicle and the Salyut 7 and Mir orbital stations as part of a group. In 1981, he was made part of a stand-by crew as a commander of a primary expedition. In 1987, he was the commander of a back-up Soviet-Syrian crew for an expedition that visited the Mir Station.

Solovyev's first spaceflight took place in 1988, lasted nine days and was performed as part of an international Soviet-Bulgarian crew composed of A.Y. Solovyev, B.P. Savinykh, and A. Aleksandrov, of Bulgaria. From February 11 to August 9, 1990, Colonel Solovyev accomplished a long-duration (179-day) flight aboard the station. He was the commander of the back-up Russian crew of the Mir-18 expedition on the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft as part of the Mir-Shuttle program. He currently holds the world record for time spent during spacewalks: 82+ hours over 16 separate outings.

In 1998, he took part in his last, fifth, spaceflight as a commander of the Mir space station's crew.

Education
Graduated from the Lenin Komsomol Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School in 1972.

Family
Solovyev's parents are Yakov Mikhailovich Solovyev (father), deceased in 1980 and Antonia Pavlovna Soloveva, who resides in Riga. He is married to Natalya Vasilyevna Solovyeva (née Katyshevtseva), with whom he has two sons, Gennady (born 1975), and Illya (1980). Solovyev resides in Star City.

Awards and honors
Foreign awards:
 * Hero of the Soviet Union (USSR);
 * Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR (USSR);
 * Order For Merit to the Fatherland 2nd and 3rd classes;
 * Order of Lenin (USSR);
 * Order of the October Revolution (USSR);
 * Order of Friendship of Peoples (USSR);
 * Medal "For Merit in Space Exploration".
 * Hero of the People's Republic of Bulgaria;
 * Order of Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgaria);
 * Officer of the Legion of Honour (France);
 * Order of Stara Planina (Republic of Bulgaria);
 * two NASA Space Flight Medals.