Viktor Savinykh
Revived the dead Salyut 7 in 1985
Timeline - Savinykh in the record
6 referenced events from the Secret Dawn - Among the Stars archive.
Viktor Savinykh trains as a geodesist and optical engineer before joining the cosmonaut corps, an expert in the instruments the stations carry.
Savinykh makes his first long-duration flight, learning the routines of station life that will save him four years later.
Salyut 7 falls silent and freezes, tumbling and powerless. Dzhanibekov and Savinykh chase it down, dock manually with a dead target, and revive it in the cold and dark, the most difficult repair ever attempted in space.
With Dzhanibekov, Savinykh boards the frozen, tumbling Salyut 7, icicles on the walls, no power, and over weeks brings it back to life in gloves and hats, the hardest repair in the history of spaceflight.
After a 1988 mission to Mir, Savinykh becomes a leading figure in Russian geodesy and university administration, a link between spaceflight and Earth science.
Savinykh remains a public authority on the station era, one of the last cosmonauts who kept a Soviet station alive by hand.