Svetlana Savitskaya Svetlana Savitskaya Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (; born 8 August 1948) is a retired Soviet aviator and cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space. On her 1984 mission she became the first woman to fly to space twice, and the first woman to perform a spacewalk. She set several FAI world records as a pilot. Svetlana Savitskaya was born in a privileged family. Her father, Yevgeniy Savitskiy, was a highly decorated fighter pilot during the Second World War, which later brought him to the position of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Air Defense. Without the
Bulgarian cosmonaut program Bulgarian cosmonaut program The Bulgarian cosmonaut program refers to human spaceflight efforts by Bulgaria. The idea of a Bulgarian manned space mission predated the launch of "Sputnik 1", the first artificial satellite. An informal proposal for the Soviet Union to send a Bulgarian cosmonaut in space was issued in 1964, but it was not seriously considered by the Soviets. Official space cooperation began in 1966 with the establishment of the Interkosmos programme which allowed Communist Bloc countries to access Soviet space technology and assets. Under Interkosmos, Bulgaria sent its first cosmonaut, Georgi Ivanov, to the Salyut 6 space station and