Valeri Polyakov
437-day record; physician-cosmonaut
Timeline - Polyakov in the record
5 entries from the Secret Dawn - Among the Stars archive, 4 of them events in Polyakov's own life.
Valeri Polyakov trains as a physician specialising in astronautics medicine and joins the IBMP, determined to fly himself and study the body from the inside.
Polyakov flies to Mir for eight months as a physician-cosmonaut, monitoring the crew and himself through the medical stresses of long-duration flight.
Polyakov launches for the longest single spaceflight ever attempted, later described as a test of whether a human can withstand the duration of a round trip to Mars.
After 437 days Polyakov insists on walking the few steps from the Soyuz to a chair, a deliberate demonstration that a crew could land on Mars and function after the journey.
Polyakov dies at 80, holder of the record no one has broken, the physician who used his own body to chart the frontier of long spaceflight.
The research file for this dossier holds 7 verified source entries, 7 of them distinct works. The sources page lists every one of them with what it covers, how it was reached, and the sharpest point at which this page and its sources come apart.