Russian Heads for a Record 14-Month Space Mission
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov blasted into orbit Saturday at the start of a record-breaking space mission due to last a year and two months.
A Soyuz TM-18 spacecraft carrying Polyakov and two crew mates, Viktor Afanasyev and Yuri Usachov, took off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and went into orbit successfully nine minutes later.
Polyakov, a 51-year-old doctor, will spend 429 days aboard Russia’s Mir space station carrying out medical experiments to test the effects of long periods of weightlessness on the human body.
Polyakov’s flight is intended to beat the previous record of 366 days in space, set by cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov between December, 1988, and December, 1989.
Before stepping aboard the Soyuz rocket, Polyakov expressed the wish that life for Russians would improve in the 14-month interval before he returns. “See you again in a better life,” he said.
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