“On March 27, the USSR Pilot-Cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky, died on the 85th year of his life,” TASS quoted a representative of the Cosmonaut Training Center.

Bykovsky made three flights into space with a total duration of almost 21 days - in 1963, 1976 and 1978.

In 1965–1969, Bykovsky headed a group of Soviet cosmonauts who were trained under the Soviet programs for flying around the moon and landing on it.