53 years ago, October 26, 1968, a flight of the piloted ship “Soyuz-3” was held with twice hero of the Soviet Union, the pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR Georgy Coast on board. Since then, 152 launch of the legendary ship from the “Unions” family was produced from the Baikonur cosmodrome. The extreme of them is the start of the ship “Union of MS-19”, on which the crew was taken to the international space station for almost 3.5 hours.
then, 53 years ago, Georgy Coast became the first one who, after the tragic death of a comrade for the detachment of cosmonauts, the commander “Soyuz-1” Vladimir Komarov, went to the flight on the ship of the eponymous series. It was an experimental flight, the cosmonaut of the coastal was to work out the dock with the Soyuz-2 ship, but the program was not fully managed. But the main thing – the launch and landing of the new ship went regularly!
For the courage, manifested in the test flight on the Soyuz-3 ship, 47-year-old Georgy Coast was awarded the second “Golden Star” Hero of the Soviet Union. Interestingly, the first medal and the title of Hero of the USSR Georgy Timofeevich received exactly 24 years before his first space flight – October 26, 1944, for courage, heroism and courage, manifested in the air battles of the Great Patriotic War.
Soyuz spacecraft flights gave a lot of data for construction in space “Salute” and “Peace” with interchangeable crews of cosmic pilots. In 1971, the ship was modernized and turned into a transport ship to deliver the crew to orbital stations and in this capacity was used until 1981 (according to Soyuz-40 inclusive), providing long-term operation of the Salute orbital stations and executing the Intercosmos program .