Valentin Lebedev - Definition and Overview

Valentin Vitaliyevich Lebedev (Russian: Валентин Витальевич Лебедев; born April 14, 1942 in Moscow) was a Soviet cosmonaut who made two flights into space.

Lebedev was a graduate of the Higher Air Force School in Orenburg with a doctorate in technical sciences. He worked as an aircraft designer before joining the cosmonaut team in 1972 as a civilian engineer.

He was the flight engineer for the Soyuz 13 mission the following year, and for the Soyuz T-5 mission to the Salyut 7 space station in 1982. At the end of his stay on the station, he returned in the Soyuz T-7 capsule. His Diary of a Cosmonaut: 211 Days in Space, provides a rare glipse of what life on board the Salyut 7 was like for the Cosmonauts who lived and worked there.

He retired from the space programme in 1993.