Aleksandr Ivanovich Laveykin (born April 21, 1951) was a Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 cosmonaut.

Born in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, Laveykin was selected as a cosmonaut on December 1, 1978. He flew on one spaceflight

Spaceflight

Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...

, for the first part of the long duration expedition Mir EO-2

Mir EO-2

Mir EO-2 was the second long duration expedition to the Soviet space station Mir, and it lasted from February to December 1987. The mission was divided into two parts , the division occurring when one of the two crew members, Aleksandr Laveykin, was replaced part way through the mission by...

. He flew as Flight Engineer

Flight engineer

Flight engineers work in three types of aircraft: fixed-wing , rotary wing , and space flight .As airplanes became even larger requiring more engines and complex systems to operate, the workload on the two pilots became excessive during certain critical parts of the flight regime, notably takeoffs...

, and was both launched and landed with the spacecraft Soyuz TM-2

Soyuz TM-2

-Mission parameters:*Mass: 7100 kg*Perigee: 341 km*Apogee: 365 km*Inclination: 51.6°*Period: 91.6 minutes-Mission highlights:...

. During this mission he spent 174 days 3 hours 25 minutes in space. Married with one child, Laveykin retired on March 28, 1994.

Launched in February 1987, his spaceflight was intended to last until December 1987. But during the mission, doctors on the ground determined that he was having minor heart irregularities. For this reason, in July he was replaced by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov

Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov

Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov , born February 20, 1943) is a former Soviet cosmonaut and twice Hero of the Soviet Union ....

, who stayed on Mir

Mir

Mir was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the...

to the end of the expedition in December.