Musa Manarov

Musa Khiramanovich Manarov is a Soviet cosmonaut born on 22 March 1951 in Baku, in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. A colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve, he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute with an engineering diploma in 1974 and was selected as a cosmonaut on 1 December 1978 in group NPOE-4, working as a test cosmonaut. He flew twice as flight engineer aboard the Mir space station. His first flight began with Soyuz TM-4 on 21 December 1987 and ended with Soyuz TM-6 on 21 December 1988, a stay of 365 days and almost 23 hours. His second flight ran from 2 December 1990 to 26 May 1991 on Soyuz TM-11 and Mir expedition 8. The two flights total 541 days. He retired on 23 July 1992, later served as director of Smolsat, and in December 2007 was elected to the Russian State Duma.