Vitali Sevastyanov

Vitali Ivanovich Sevastyanov, cyrillic Виталий Иванович Севастьянов, (born July 8, 1935 in Krasnouralsk[?]) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew on the Soyuz 9 and Soyuz 18 missions.

He trained as an engineer at the Moscow Aviation Institute[?] and after graduation in 1959, joined Sergey Korolev's design bureau, where he worked on the design of the Vostok spacecraft. He also lectured at the Cosmonaut Training Centre[?], teaching the physics of spaceflight. In 1967 he commenced cosmonaut training himself.

After two successful missions, including a two-month stay on the Salyut 4 space station, he was stood down from active flight status in 1976. He worked in ground control for the Salyut 6 station before returning to spacecraft design in the 1980s to work on the Buran project.

In 1993, he left the space programme and was elected to the Duma in 1994.