Bykovskii, Valerii Fedorovich

Born Aug. 2, 1934, in Pavlovskii Posad, Moscow Oblast. Pilot and cosmonaut of the USSR; colonel; Hero of the Soviet Union (1963). Member of the CPSU since 1963. Graduated from the school of the Moscow Air Club and, in 1955, from the Kachinsk Air Force Pilots’ School.

Bykovskii was a military pilot. In 1968 he graduated from the Zhukovskii Air Force Engineering Academy (Moscow). Between June 14 and June 19, 1963 he orbited around the earth 81 times in the spaceship Vostok 5, flying for more than 119 hours and over 3.3 million km. From June 16 his flight was simultaneous with that of the spaceship Vostok 6, piloted by V. V. Nikolaeva-Tereskova. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, medals, and foreign orders.