On April 10, 1979, the ship "Soyuz-33" takes off from Baikonur. It carries commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov and the Bulgarian cosmonaut-researcher Georgi Ivanov. The flight is part of the "Intercosmos" program and should take them to the orbital station "Salyut-6".
However, this becomes one of the most dramatic tests in the history of manned cosmonautics. During the docking maneuver, the main engine of "Soyuz-33" fails. The ship could not reach the station and remained in orbit with limited possibilities for return.
Rukavishnikov decided to descend with the backup engine. Due to the failure, the ship entered the atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory, which caused significantly higher overloads. On April 12, 1979, the two landed successfully, but the flight was terminated earlier than planned.
The engineer who reaches the commander's chair
Rukavishnikov was born on September 18, 1932 in Tomsk. He graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1957 and began working in Sergei Korolev's design bureau. There he participated in the creation and testing of electronic systems for spacecraft.
He was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps in 1967. His first flight was with “Soyuz-10“ in April 1971. The crew reached “Salyut-1“, but failed to transfer to the station due to a problem with the docking mechanism. In December 1974, Rukavishnikov flew with “Soyuz-16“ - a mission that prepared the Soviet-American project “Apollo-Soyuz“.
His third flight was with Georgi Ivanov. It is important not only for Bulgaria, which sent its first man into space, but also for Rukavishnikov himself: he became the first civilian commander of a spacecraft in Soviet manned cosmonautics.
Recognition in Bulgaria
After his return, Rukavishnikov was awarded the title of Hero of the People's Republic of Bulgaria and received the Order of “Georgi Dimitrov“. The awards are related to his role in the flight, which made Bulgaria the sixth country to send its citizen into space.
Rukavishnikov himself was already a Hero of the Soviet Union twice. After the space flights, he continued his work in the space industry, and later headed the Cosmonautics Federation of the USSR and the Russian Federation.
Nikolai Rukavishnikov died on October 19, 2002 in Moscow at the age of 70. In Bulgarian space history, he remains as the commander who not only led Georgi Ivanov to orbit, but also managed to return the two to Earth after an engine failure - with composure, experience and manual control.
Sources: btvnovinite.bg, archives.bnr.bg, 168chasa.bg