The pilot-cosmonaut and twice the hero of the Soviet Union was 93 years old. He passed away today, June 15th.
The death of Shatalov was reported by the press service of Roscosmos. He was born on December 7, 1927 in Petropavlovsk (Kazakhstan) in the family of a railway worker, and spent his childhood and school years in Leningrad. At this time, the future pilot was engaged in the aircraft modeling circle of the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers. In 1943, Shatalov graduated from the eight-year school in Petropavlovsk and entered the Voronezh Air Force Special School, which graduated in 1945.
Then Shatalov graduated from the Kachin Military Aviation School of Pilots in 1949, and in 1956 - from the Air Force Academy. After that, Vladimir Aleksandrovich worked as an instructor pilot at the Kachin school, having risen first to the squadron commander, and then to the deputy commander of an aviation regiment.
Its first space flight took place on January 14, 1969 onboard Soyuz-4. Shatalov was the first to approach and dock with the Soyuz-5 spacecraft, and with his participation, for the first time in the world, an experimental space station was created and the transition into open space from one spacecraft to another was carried out by Alexey Eliseev and Yevgeny Khrunov.
In total, Shatalov visited space three times. The second flight took place in October of the same year, and the third - on Soyuz-10 - in April 1971. Vladimir Aleksandrovich was then the commander of the spacecraft and supervised the world's first docking of such a vehicle with the Salyut orbital station. However, it was not possible to complete the retraction due to the breakdown of the docking apparatus, but it was still a breakthrough.
From January 1987 to September 1991, Shatalov served as head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. For his long and fruitful life, the cosmonaut was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, "For Service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces of the USSR" III degree, "For Services to the Fatherland" IV degree, the Order of Friendship and other Soviet and international awards and medals …