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Kazakhstan’s Talgat Musabayev (Photo: Spacefacts) |
The first human astronaut was Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet space pilot, who made history in April 1961 by orbiting the Earth for 108 minutes aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.
In 1968, Gagarin tragically lost his life during a test flight of a new aircraft. Over 30 years later, Kazakhstan astronaut Talgat Musabayev became the first person to conduct a spacewalk during a 207-day mission aboard the Mir space station in 1998. Unlike Gagarin, he survived two life-threatening incidents while performing spacewalks. Now 55 years old, Musabayev serves as a Major General and the Director of the Bayterek space rocket launch site in Kazakhstan for Russia.
Throughout his space career, General Musabayev completed three spaceflights. During his second mission, he commanded an international crew of six from Russia, Kazakhstan, the United States, and France aboard Mir. At that time, Mir experienced several technical malfunctions during its seven years of operation, including computer system failures and operational equipment issues. Ultimately, the Mir space station was deorbited and fell into the Pacific Ocean in 2001 after 15 years in orbit.
There was one critical incident when the ground control in Moscow made a serious error that caused Mir to lose power and drift freely in space. This was the first major incident in the history of Soviet and Russian space exploration. General Musabayev recounted, “That day, the entire system aboard Mir shut down. We had no life support systems, no oxygen, no water, and no carbon dioxide filters. We had to rely on the oxygen available within the space station. There was no electricity, no light. It was pitch black. All we could feel was silence and fear.” It took seven days to identify and rectify the error.
However, Musabayev faced a near-death experience during one of his five spacewalks. When he exited the station, one of the tethers connecting him to the spacecraft broke loose, and he recalled, “I floated in space, drifting further away from Mir every second. There was nothing I could do to save myself. It was terrifying.” Then, an unseen force seemed to pull him back towards the station. Even now, recounting the experience, he is still in awe: “I immediately grabbed onto the station with both hands. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I would have bitten down on the station.” When asked, “What mysterious force brought you back to the station?”, General Musabayev laughed and jokingly replied, “Perhaps God saved me. Since we were in orbit for peaceful purposes, maybe the divine intervened to help.”
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