Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov

Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov (born February 20, 1943) is a former Soviet cosmonaut and twice Hero of the Soviet Union. Born in Moscow, Russia, he graduated from Moscow Bauman-Highschool in 1969 with a doctorate degree, specialised on spacecraft steering systems. He was selected as cosmonaut on December 1, 1978. For his first spaceflight, he flew as Flight Engineer on Soyuz T-9, which lasted from June to November 1983. For his second spaceflight, he replaced one of the long-duration crew members of Mir EO-2. He was launched with the spacecraft Soyuz TM-3 in July 1987, and landed with the same spacecraft in December 1987. All together he spent 309 days, 18 hours, 2 minutes in space. He served as backup for Soyuz T-8, Soyuz T-13, and Soyuz T-15. He resigned from the cosmonaut team on October 26, 1993, when he became chief of NPOE Cosmonaut-group; since 1996 he is Chief flight test directorate of RKKE.