For almost a decade, Anatoly Soloviev He became the person who made the most space walks. Nobody has been able to overcome it and it seems difficult to do it, with the increase and turnover of astronauts and cosmonauts in the missions.
In 1965, Alexei Leonov He became the first human to take a space walk. Since then, hundreds have done it, but no one more times and for longer than his compatriot Solovyev.
Born in Latvia, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1948, Solovyev joined the Soviet Air Force in 1966, graduating as a fighter pilot. By 1976 he was selected to be a cosmonaut.
“I was never a dreamer, and as a child I did not dream of being a cosmonaut,” Solovyev recounted. in an interview with the Russkiy Mir Foundation. “I thought about flying in my last years of school, but I was thinking about airplanes, of course. I wanted to fly in a fighter plane and, like many people, I became a cosmonaut through aviation.”
Solovyev flew into space five times: His first spaceflight occurred in 1988, when he served as commander of the Soyuz TM-5 mission to the Mir space station. He flew four more full-duration missions to Mir, and also flew the space shuttle Atlantis during STS-71 in 1995.
accumulated in total 651 days in space.
Anatoly Solovyev’s record for space walks
But during their flights, the cosmonaut made a total of 16 walks in space. These walks are done to perform a variety of tasks, including installing and repairing equipment, conducting scientific experiments, and recovering space debris.
“It just came up,” Solovyev explained in the interview. “I never referred to my numbers as a record, nor did I think about surpassing someone else’s achievements before going for a walk. Space is not a stadium; it is not divided into rounds to see who can go further, higher, faster.”
“But I can tell you that even before my first spacewalk I always strove to do one. Because the cosmonaut profession involves two key skills that demonstrate what could be called ‘superior piloting’ and make one a high-level cosmonaut. These are: work in open spaces and drive a spaceship.”
The Latvian completed 82 hours and 21 minutes in outer space, walking out of any ship. As we have said, it is a difficult challenge to overcome, since currently the walks are distributed among more astronauts and cosmonauts, in addition to the fact that the ships and stations do not require as many repairs.
Solovyev withdrew from the Russian space program in 2000. and is currently a senior researcher at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.