CCCP

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut is the first man from Poland to go to space.

First Man from Poland

Mirosław Hermaszewski was born on 15 September 1941 in Lipniki, then part of the Wolynian Voivodeship (now Ukraine). He graduated from the Polish Air Force Officer School in Dęblin in 1965, continued his education at the Karol Świerczewski Military Academy in Warsaw in 1971, and later at the Voroshilov Military Academy in Moscow in 1982. In November 1976, Hermaszewski was selected from nearly 500 Polish pilots to join the Soviet-led Interkosmos program. He launched aboard Soyuz 30 on 27 June 1978 with Soviet cosmonaut Pyotr Klimuk, spending 7 days, 22 hours, and 2 minutes in space, during which he conducted scientific experiments, photographed Earth, and completed 126 orbits aboard the Salyut 6 space station. Hermaszewski remains Poland’s only astronaut. He passed away on 12 December 2022 in Warsaw at the age of 81, following complications from surgery.

Soyuz 30

Soyuz 30 was an eight-day visitation mission to the long duration Salyut 6 crew. It brought the first Polish cosmonaut to space and the crew performed several experiments before coming back to Earth.

Soyuz is a human-carrying capsule built and operated by Russia, capable of transporting up to three people to the Space Station at a time. It has been upgraded numerous times since its first use in the 1960s for the Soviet lunar program and was the only crewed vehicle for the Station from 2011 to 2020.

Soyuz

Miroslaw Hermaszewski

Poland

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

Soyuz 13

This was a free-flying test flight of the newly redesigned Soyuz vehicle after the Soyuz 11 fatal in-space accident. In addition to testing Soyuz systems, it was the first dedicated science flight of the Soviet Union and carried the Orion 2 Space Observatory to obtain information on thousands of stars.

Soyuz 18

Soyuz 18 was the second mission to have the designation Soyuz 18. The first, Soyuz 18a, ended with an in-flight abort during launch. The Soyuz 18 mission number was then given to the next flight. The two-person crew was the second to reach the Salyut 4 space station and performed a two month biology, astrophysics, medical, and environmental science mission. The flight overlapped with the Soyuz-Apollo Test Program and marked the first time two unrelated Soviet missions were in space together.

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