science · 26 June 1925 · 100 years ago
birth
Born 26 Jun 1925; died 10 Jan 1970 at age 44.
Russian cosmonaut who was pilot of the historic Voskhod 2 space mission, launched on 18 Mar 1965. While the flight was in orbit, the co-pilot. Aleksey Leonov, became the first man to walk in space. The flight only lasted a day due to a failure of the automatic guidance system. Belyayev was selected for the space programme in 1960 he had nearly 15 years experience as a military pilot. He was originally scheduled to fly on the Vostok 8 mission into the Earth's van Allen radiation belt, but this was cancelled. When Belyayev died after a long stomach illness, periotonitis that resulted from an operation on a stomach ulcer, he became the first spaceman to die of natural causes.
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