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Former Soviet cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov dies

Konstantin Feoktistov (bottom) pictured with fellow cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valery Bykovsky - 1965 photo
Feoktistov (bottom) was the USSR's only non-Communist Party cosmonaut

The USSR's first civilian cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov, a crew member of the Voskhod spaceship in 1964, has died in Moscow aged 83, Russian media say.

Feoktistov also designed and tested spaceships himself, and has a crater on the Moon named after him.

He worked on the design of both the Salyut and Mir space stations.

The 1964 flight is famous for being the first in which crew members were sent into space without wearing special space suits.

Feoktistov was born in February 1926 in the city of Voronezh, and was wounded while serving in intelligence in World War II.

In 1964 he became the first non-military person to be sent on a space flight. He was also the only non-member of the Communist Party in Soviet history to become a cosmonaut.

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