Belyayev, Pavel (1925–1970)

Soviet cosmonaut. His one flight, on Voskhod 2 in March 1965, was made up of a series of emergencies. During the mission, the other cosmonaut, Aleksei Leonov, made the first space walk. When he returned, the hatch door would not seal properly. On re-entry, the spacecraft's retrorockets failed and had to be manually fired. There were also problems with the service module, which began to gyrate when it had a late separation from its re-entry capsule. Belyayev was selected as a cosmonaut in 1960, and left the space programme in 1970.