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Selected articleSalyut 6 (Russian: Салют-6; lit. Salute 6) was a Soviet orbital space station, the eighth flown as part of the Salyut programme. Launched on 29 September 1977 by a Proton rocket, the station was the first of the 'second-generation' type of space station. Salyut 6 possessed several revolutionary advances over the earlier Soviet space stations, which it nevertheless resembled in overall design. These included the addition of a second docking port, a new main propulsion system and the station's primary scientific instrument, the BST-1M multispectral telescope. The addition of the second docking port made crew handovers and station resupply by unmanned Progress freighters possible for the first time, which in turn allowed the programme to evolve from short-duration station visits to long-duration expeditions, marking the beginning of the transition to multi-modular, long-term research stations in space. From 1977 until 1982, Salyut 6 was visited by five long- and eleven short-duration crews, including cosmonauts from Warsaw Pact countries as part of the Intercosmos programme. The very first long-duration crew to visit the station broke a long-standing endurance record set on board the American Skylab station, staying 96 days in orbit; the longest expedition lasted 185 days. These crews were responsible for carrying out the primary missions of Salyut 6, including astronomy, Earth-resources observations and the study of human adaptation to space. Following the completion of these missions and the launch of its successor, Salyut 6 was deorbited on 29 July 1982, almost five years after its launch. Selected biography On August 16, 2005 at 1:44 a.m. EDT he passed the record of 748 days held by Sergei Avdeyev. He now has spent a total of 803 days and 9 hours and 39 minutes in space. Krikalyov was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. He enjoys swimming, skiing, cycling, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio operations, particularly from space (callsigns U5MIR and X75M1K). On February 15, 2007, Krikalyov was appointed Vice President of the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (Russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация "Энергия" им. С.П.Королева) in charge of manned space flights. Krikalyov was dubbed by many "the last Citizen of the USSR " as in 1991–1992 he spent 311 days, 20 hours and 1 minute aboard the Mir space station while, back on Earth, the Soviet Union collapsed. A fictional account of how Krikalyiov may have felt about this is described in the song "Casiopea", written by Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. Human spaceflight news
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