Soyuz 28 Mission patch / Soyuz T-6 Mission patch.
9 June 2011
In this year's 50 th anniversary of the first man in space, let us remember that was the first European in space:
Born 20 August 1938, in the town of La Rochelle, France, Jean-Loup Jacques Marie Chrétien, is a French engineer, a retired Général de Brigade (brigadier general) in the Armée de l'Air (French air force), and a former CNES astronaut. He flew on two Franco-Soviet space missions and a NASA Space Shuttle mission. Chrétien was the first Frenchman in space.
Astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien
In April 1979, the Soviet Union offered France the opportunity to fly a cosmonaut on board a joint Soviet-French space flight, along the same lines as the agreement to fly non-Soviet cosmonauts from member countries of the Intercosmos program. The offer was accepted, and France began a spationaut selection process in September 1979.
Chrétien was one of two finalists named on 12 June 1980. He started training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in September 1980. The following year he was named as the Research Cosmonaut for the prime crew of the Soyuz T-6 mission.
Soyuz T spacecraft
Soyuz T-6 was launched on 24 June 1982, and Chrétien, Dzhanibekov and Ivanchenkov linked up with Salyut 7 and joined the crew of Berezovoi and Lebedev already on board. They spent nearly seven days carrying out a program of joint Soviet-French experiments, including a series of French echography cardiovascular monitoring system experiments, before returning to Earth after a flight lasting 7 days, 21 hours, 50 minutes, 42 seconds. This flight made him the first Western non-American to go to space, as well as the first Western European.
Allegory of the Franco-Soviet mission Soyuz T-6
Following the mission he was appointed Chief, CNES Astronaut Office.
The Prime
From a geographic standpoint, the history changes, because the first man of the European continent that was the first European in space is Vladimir Remek.
Cosmonaut Vladimir Remek
Vladimir Remek is a cosmonaut who was born on September 26, 1948, in Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic). Before he became a cosmonaut, Remek was in the Czech Air Force.
Remek became a cosmonaut in 1976. He was the first citizen of a nation other than the United States or the USSR to go into space. He flew aboard Soyuz 28, March 2, 1978. The crew spent 8 days aboard the Salyut 6 space station.
Salyut Space Station & Soyuz and Progress spacecrafts
The station has operates on orbit for 1763 days. Salyut 6 was completely rebuilt and equipped with two connecting nodes compared to the previous stations. It enabled to send to the station also the „visiting“ crew besides the basic own one and complete the reserves on the continuous basis through freight spacecraft Progress.
Salyut-6 Space Station with docked Progress
31 spacecrafts have docked with the station in total. The reached operating life of the station severalfold exceeded the planned one. Also the first international crew Alexey Gubarev and Vladimír Remek resided at Salyut 6 (transfered by the spacecraft Soyuz 28).
So, if we refer to the historical context, the first European astronaut's from the "free world" is the French Jean-Loup Chretien. Only in the geographical context is the Czech Vladimir Remek.
Actually member of European Parliament, the First Czech Cosmonaut on Soyuz 28, First European in space.
To everyone agrees, I will say that these are two countries with the same colors on the flags: blue, white, and red! And finally under the same flag, that of EU.
Related links:
(Russian) Biography of Jean-Loup Chrétien at the website on Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russia: http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=1890
NASA Biography of Jean-Loup Chrétien: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/chretien.html
ESA - 50 years of humans in space - Vladimír Remek: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Gagarin/SEMQTF3UFLG_1.html
Biography of Vladimír Remek at the European Parliament: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/expert/searchForm/view.do?id=28330&language=en
Personal website of Vladimir Remek (Czech/English): http://www.vladimirremek.cz/
Images, Text, Credits: Orbiter.ch / Wikipedia / NASA / ESA / ROSCOSMOS.
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
