Portal:Kazakhstan/Selected biography

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Toktar Ongarbaevich Aubakirov (Kazakh: Тоқтар Онгəрбəевич Әубәкіров, born on July 27, 1946, in Karaganda, Kazakhstan) is a Kazakh military pilot and cosmonaut.

Aubakirov graduated from the Air Force Institute and was a parachutist and test pilot with the rank of Major General in the Kazakh Air Force before he was selected as a cosmonaut.

On October 2, 1991 he started together with the Austrian cosmonaut Franz Viehböck and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov in Soyuz TM-13 from the Baikonur cosmodrome spaceport, and spent over eight days in space. He was also the first Soviet citizen to go into space without being fully certified as a cosmonaut, as his flight was hurried forward — several commercial international cosmonauts were already booked, but the flight of a Kazakh cosmonaut was part of the Baikonur rental agreement between Kazakhstan and Russia.