Nikolai Tikhonov (cosmonaut)
Soviet and Russian cosmonaut
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nikolay Vladimirovich Tikhonov (Russian Cyrillic: Николай Владимирович Тихонов; born May 23, 1982) is a retired Russian cosmonaut, selected in 2006. He was scheduled to make his first space flight in 2020, onboard Soyuz MS-16, but was removed for medical reasons.
Nikolay Tikhonov | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | May 23, 1982 |
| Space career | |
| RSA Cosmonaut | |
| Status | Retired (Jul 2020) |
Time in space | None |
| Selection | 2006 RSA Group |
Cosmonaut career
After working as an engineer for RKKE, he was selected for cosmonaut training in 2006.
In 2013, Tikhonov served as cavenaut into the ESA CAVES[1] training in Sardinia, alongside Soichi Noguchi, Andreas Mogensen, David Saint-Jacques, Andrew Feustel and Michael Fincke.
He was selected as a backup flight engineer for Soyuz MS-02. He was made a prime crew member of Soyuz MS-04 but, due to Russian budget cuts, the crews were changed and Tikhonov was then slated to make his first spaceflight on the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. He was again removed from the manifest due to delays in launching the Russian Nauka module.[2][3] He was scheduled to fly into space as commander of the Soyuz MS-15 mission, although he was removed for a third time following the aborted launch of Soyuz MS-10, and the subsequent crew changes that followed. He was scheduled to finally make his first flight onboard Soyuz MS-16 in 2020, but ended up replaced for medical reasons.[4]
In July 2020 it was reported he had left the cosmonaut corps "in connection with new data on his state of health".[5]