Valeri Polyakov
437-day record; physician-cosmonaut
Timeline - Polyakov in the record
6 referenced events from the Secret Dawn - Among the Stars archive.
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.
Physician-cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov launches for the longest single spaceflight in history, 437 days aboard Mir, proving a human can survive the round-trip time to Mars, and studying his own body to prove it.
Polyakov launches for the longest single spaceflight ever attempted, a deliberate 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.