FM-2

Personal: Male. Only true phantom cosmonaut; flew twice in space aboard Zond 7 and Cosmos 368.

Astronaut Career

Astronaut Group: Phantom Cosmonaut.

FM-2 was a true phantom - a phantom being a human-tissue-equivalent plastic dummy used in radiological studies. FM-2 was instrumented with detectors internally and externally to measure the radiation dose and dose rate a real person would experience during flight to the moon and earth orbit. The FM-2 phantom, complete with what looked like the face of Yuri Gagarin, flew into space twice. His first mission was aboard Zond 7 in August 1969. This was the only completely successful L1 spacecraft flight that could have returned cosmonauts alive or uninjured to earth. On August 11, 1969, FM-2 flew past the moon aboard Zond-7 at a distance of 1984.6 km. The Zond-7 conducted two picture taking sessions, then successfully accomplished a double-dip re-entry and landed 50 km from its aim point near Kustani in the USSR. FM-2 was reused on the six-day orbital flight of Cosmos 368 in October 1970. He was then pensioned off to a place of honour at the Polytechnic Museum, Moscow.