Biography of Igor Petrovitch Volk

Igor Volk was born on April 12th, 1937, a sign of the fate because it will become the cosmonautic day, in the city of Zmiiv oblast of Kharkiv, in the northeast of the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. He died at the age of 79 on January 3td, 2017.
He went to the primary school N°1 in the city of Zmiiv and to the high school N°16 in the city of Ussuriysk at the extreme East of Russia. In 1954 he graduated from the intermediate high school N°5 of the city of Kursk, oblast of Kursk in Russia. In this time he spent a lot of time in the aero club of Kursk and flew for the first time in 1954.

In 1954 he begins his active military service and in 1956 he becomes graduated, two years ahead of time, of the fighter pilots school of Kirovohrad (КВАУЛ, KVAUL). In 1956 he serves in the patrol of the district of Baku (ПВО, PVO), in Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, by flying on Il-28 and Tu-16. He finishes his period of reservist in 1963 by becoming the oldest reservist lieutenant and in 1987 becomes reservist colonel.

From 1963 till 1965 he trains in the test pilots school: Flight Research Institute of Gromov (ЛИИ, LII) and enter in the Flight Research Center (ЛИЦ, LITs) in 1965. He graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute (МАИ, MAI) in 1969 without stopping his work. From 1995 till 1997 he is the director the LITs and guiding assistant of LII. He quit LII on February 26th, 2002.

Within the "SPIRAL" space plane program he piloted in May, 1976 the EPOS or Mig-105.11 test model. On July 12th, 1977 he integrated the special group of preparation of the Buran program, on August 3rd, 1978 he obtains the authorization from the Medical State Commission (ГМК, GMK) to become a cosmonaut. At the end of 1978 he is choosed to command the pilot team N°1 of test "A" at the center LITs LII. From April, 1979 till December, 1980 he trains to prepare for the space flight in the star city (ЦПК, TsPK), on April 12th, 1982 he is qualified for the flight and becomes a test cosmonaut (status used by the Soviets / Russians to speak about a cosmonaut who has not flown yet). He quits the cosmonaut profession in 1995.

From September, 1982 till May, 1983 he trains for the space flight as a member of the main crew with Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov, but due to the arrangement of the flight program of the Saliout-7 station he is removed from the crew.

On December 26th, 1983 begin the trainings for the flight on the spacecraft Soyouz-T. He lift off aboard Soyouz T-12 with Djanibekov and Savitskaya for a mission of 12 days (from 17 till 29 June 1984) on the Saliout-7 space station. He came back on earth aboard Soyouz T-11, duration of the flight: 11d 19h 14m 36s. His code name was Pamir 3. Within the mission, two hours after landing he had to pilot planes, the flighing laboratory Tu-154 (simulator of Buran) and the jet fighter Mig-25 following the route Baikonur-Akhtubinsk-Baikonur, with the goal of studying the capacity to pilot. As Igor Volk said the reason of his flight was to demonstrate the capacity of a cosmonaut to pilot the Buran shuttle after an orbital flight and he managed it perfectly.