Salijan Sharipov – The Kyrgyz Astronaut
Salijan Sharipov was born in 1964, into an Uzbek family in Uzgen, in the Osh oblast. He was brought up in austere surroundings along with his four brothers and two sisters. As a child he enjoyed reading and he still lists reading and playing football as amongst his favourite pastimes.
Sharipov qualified as an Air Force pilot in 1987, (training in the Ukraine) and he worked for some time as a pilot instructor based in Tokmak (just East of Bishkek).
He was selected in 1990 for the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in “Star City” and trained as a crew commander for missions to the MIR space station.
Following degrees in Engineering and Ecological Management, he later he graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in cartography.
Having been in the backup crew for several missions, he was finally included in the American-Russian crew for the 89th Space Shuttle mission (in the Endeavour) to the MIR space station. This was the eighth such mission to the MIR space station, and took off from the Kennedy Space Centre on Cape Canaveral on 22nd January 1998 at 21.47 (Florida time). He became the 372nd person to be blasted into space as an astronaut (cosmonaut), and on this first mission he logged 211 hours in space.
On his return to earth, some of his close relatives were waiting to greet him.
He was also “slated” to fly once more to the MIR space station, first in November 2000, then in 2001, but the programme was cancelled and the MIR space station abandoned.
In April 2004, he was selected to lead the eight-man reserve crew of the spacecraft “Soyuz”, due to fly to the International Space Station from the “Baykonur” space centre in Kazakhstan. It was the third time he had headed a reserve crew but finally, in October 2004, he became the commander of one of the main crews for the International Space Expedition. Apparently, after four months in zero gravity, it was discovered that he had grown taller, (losing a natural curve in his spine), and could no longer fit into the seat of the spacecraft which was due to return him to earth. To enable him to do so, he needed to wear a special “extra-tight” suit (called a ‘Penguin” costume) which would make him smaller so that he could fit into the seat on the Soyuz craft.
He now lives in Russia with his wife and two children, ( a girl born in 1988, and a boy born in 1992). His father and brothers and sisters still live in Uzgen. His official NASA photograph shows him with a Russian flag on his sleeve – but both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan honour him as their own. He has been awarded some of the highest degrees of merit by the Kyrgyz Government – “Ak Shumkar”, “Baatyr of the Kyrgyz Republic” – and made an “honorary citizen of Bishkek”.
Bishkek