Cosmonaut

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko on board the orbiting Mir space station today broke the space endurance record of 237 days set in 1984 by three cosmonauts in the now abandoned Salyut 7 space station, Radio Moscow said.

In her Pasadena living room, Loretta Whitesides is making last-minute preparations for a global bash that by all appearances has gone viral. Partiers by the hundreds Tuesday will pour into the Griffith Observatory and about 300 other sites, from Saudi Arabia to France and Argentina to Nepal. On the Las Vegas Strip, about 800 revelers are expected at Caesars Palace. The sprawling party is known as Yuri's Night, the kind of event that during the Cold War might have merited an FBI visit to Whitesides' home.

Konstantin Feoktistov Spacecraft designer and cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov, 83, a spacecraft designer and cosmonaut who was a member of the first three-man crew to fly in space, died Saturday in Moscow, the Russian space agency announced. No cause was given. Feoktistov was aboard Voskhod 1 in October 1964 as part of the first group space flight in history. He also played a key role in the development of the Voskhod. "I had many enemies who did not want me to make that flight," Feoktistov told the Boston Globe in 1998.

Konstantin Feoktistov Spacecraft designer and cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov, 83, a spacecraft designer and cosmonaut who was a member of the first three-man crew to fly in space, died Saturday in Moscow, the Russian space agency announced. No cause was given. Feoktistov was aboard Voskhod 1 in October 1964 as part of the first group space flight in history. He also played a key role in the development of the Voskhod. "I had many enemies who did not want me to make that flight," Feoktistov told the Boston Globe in 1998.

Pavel Popovich Former Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, 79, a former Soviet cosmonaut who was best known for a space first in 1962 -- piloting one of two manned satellites that orbited the Earth at the same time -- died Wednesday of a stroke at a Ukraine sanatorium, said Boris Yesin of the Russian astronaut training center. The front-page headline in The Times lauded Popovich and his colleague, Andrian Nikolayev, as "Space Twins" after they landed in August 1962.

Popovich obituary: The obituary of former cosmonaut Pavel Popovich in Thursday's Section A said that he joined the Russian Air Force in 1954. He joined the Soviet Air Force.

International Space Station Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield returns to Earth, and eventually Canada, on Monday. So, what better way to end the mission than doing a personalized rendition of David Bowie's classic "A Space Oddity," in the first music video from space. Hadfield, from the Canadian Space Agency, has been one chatty dude up there in the International Space Station, tweeting constantly during the Expedition 35 mission, which included a precedent-setting emergency spacewalk this weekend to repair an ammonia coolant leak.

It's nice to read that Yuri Romanenko, Soviet cosmonaut, has returned to Earth after spending 326 days aboard the Mir space station (Part I, Dec. 30). Lately, I've heard a number of lamentations regarding the Soviet Union's "leap ahead of us" in space. But have the Soviets ever succeeded in landing men on the moon the way we did nearly 20 years ago? No. JESSIE G. DeMESSA Huntington Beach

Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Vasyutin, taken ill during a space mission a month ago, is still sick in a hospital, the government newspaper Izvestia said Friday. Vasyutin's illness brought a premature halt to the mission of the orbiting Salyut 7 space station and he and two other cosmonauts touched down Nov. 21.

A senior Russian cosmonaut was dropped from the first U.S.-Russian crew bound for NASA's planned international space station as a struggle over which nation will command the orbiting outpost neared its end, U.S. space agency officials said. Space flight veteran Anatoly Solovyev was a member of the first crew assigned to the planned space station, along with U.S. astronaut William Shepherd.

Popovich obituary: The obituary of former cosmonaut Pavel Popovich in Thursday's Section A said that he joined the Russian Air Force in 1954. He joined the Soviet Air Force.

Pavel Popovich Former Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, 79, a former Soviet cosmonaut who was best known for a space first in 1962 -- piloting one of two manned satellites that orbited the Earth at the same time -- died Wednesday of a stroke at a Ukraine sanatorium, said Boris Yesin of the Russian astronaut training center. The front-page headline in The Times lauded Popovich and his colleague, Andrian Nikolayev, as "Space Twins" after they landed in August 1962.

Designed by Soviet secret-keepers in the depths of the Cold War, Star City lies deep in the pine and birch forests on Moscow's edge, and even now you can't find it on many maps. The men at the gates and checkpoints ask for your documents, and when you get inside the legendary cosmonaut training center, you expect to find something splendid -- a glimmer of the cosmos, a flash of eternal striving.

Two cosmonauts spent more than five hours outside the International Space Station, laying cable and installing panels to guard against debris. Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov strung Ethernet cable along the space station's Russian Zarya module, part of a project to allow the U.S. section to provide power to the Russian section in case of an emergency.

Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin began a six-hour spacewalk by hitting a golf ball into Earth's orbit from the International Space Station to raise money for the Russian space program. Tyurin, the station's flight engineer, made a one-armed swat with a gold-plated six-iron. The ball was expected to circle Earth at least 48 times before it burned up in the atmosphere. He spent 16 minutes setting up the shot off a ladder. Canadian golf club maker Element 21 Golf Co.

IN "Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist," Daniel Kalder chronicles four journeys he took to Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El and Udmurtia: obscure Eastern European republics forgotten by history, invisible to tourists and non-existent in the Western imagination. For Kalder, these "lost zones" are beautiful precisely because they are not beautiful -- and worth exploring because nobody wants to explore them. Kalder calls himself an anti-tourist.

Yevgeny Khrunov, 67, a Russian cosmonaut who participated in one of the early linkups of two manned spacecraft. Khrunov was the flight research engineer on the Soyuz 5 mission that went into space Jan. 15, 1969. Portions of the takeoff and flight were shown on Soviet television, the first such mission to be so presented. The Soyuz 5 entered a coordinated orbit 130 miles above the Earth with a Soyuz 4 spacecraft that had a single cosmonaut aboard.

Anatoly Levchenko, a Soviet cosmonaut who took part in a mission to the Mir space station last December, has died, the official Soviet press agency Tass said today. Without elaborating, Tass said Levchenko, 47, died Saturday after a grave illness. Levchenko was part of a three-man crew launched in the Soyuz TM-4 spacecraft on Dec. 21 last year to relieve the crew aboard the orbiting Soviet space station Mir.

Two crew members ventured out of the International Space Station on Thursday night for a nearly six-hour spacewalk filled with maintenance tasks, but plans for Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov to whack a golf ball into orbit -- the longest drive ever -- were scratched. The stunt, sponsored by a Canadian golf club manufacturer, has been postponed.

Guys -- you're trapped in a SigAlert when you suddenly feel the call of nature. What to do? Well, you'd have no problem if you owned one piece of equipment on sale Oct. 2-3 at the Space and Aviation Memorabilia Auction in Bell Canyon (near West Hills). It's a "male cosmonaut restroom" (estimated value $500 to $700), which Aurora Galleries says is "complete with its hoses and valves" and in "very good condition" (see photo).