Oleg Grigoryevich Makarov

Who was Oleg Grigoryevich Makarov?

Oleg Grigoryevich Makarov was a Soviet cosmonaut.

Makarov was born in Udomlya, Tver Oblast, USSR. He graduated from Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School in 1957 and started working at the Special Design Bureau Number One as an engineer, working on the Vostok spacecraft. In 1966, he was selected for cosmonaut training.

At first he did work on the Soviet lunar program and was training with Aleksei Leonov for a circumlunar flight. After the success of Apollo 8, however, the flight was cancelled.

His first spaceflight was Soyuz 12 in 1973, a test flight to check the changes made to the Soyuz spacecraft after the Soyuz 11 disaster. His second flight was the abortive Soyuz 18a that made an emergency landing in the Altay Mountains, 21 minutes after launch. With his third launch on Soyuz 27 he flew to space station Salyut 6 and landed five days later with the Soyuz 26 spacecraft. His last mission was Soyuz T-3, during which several repairs on Salyut 6 were done. He was also in backup crews for Soyuz 17 and Soyuz T-2. Altogether he spent 20 days, 17 hours, and 44 minutes in space.

After his final spaceflight he continued to work for Energia, both in the Mir space station program as well as the Energia-Buran development.