Bertalan Farkas

• Salyut 6 EP-5   Soyuz 36/Sojus 35 (1980 )

Bertalan Farkas ( born August 2, 1949 in Gyulaháza ) is a Hungarian pilot and former cosmonaut. He is the first Hungarian who was in space.

Training

Bertalan Farkas attended after graduating from the Military Aviation School in Szolnok 1969, the Soviet Air Force Academy in Krasnodar, where he graduated in 1972. Farkas worked as a scientist at the Polytechnic University in Budapest. Later he joined as a pilot in the Hungarian Air Force.

Spaceman activity

On March 1, 1978 Farkas was selected as a cosmonaut and included in the Intercosmos program. In 1980, he flew as Research Cosmonaut of the fifth visiting team of the Salyut 6 into space, he arrived at the Soyuz 36. After his landing with Soyuz 35 on June 3, 1980 Farkas retired from the cosmonaut corps.

The space capsule, with which he returned again to the earth, is exhibited in Budapest in the Transport Museum.

Subsequent activities

Farkas became the Air Force Secretary at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, DC appointed. Today he is president of Airlines Service and Trade Ltd.. in Budapest. The pilot has now assumed the rank of brigadier general of the Air Force.

After the turn he joined the Hungarian Democratic Forum, a party with conservative- bourgeois orientation. For the electoral district Baktalórántháza in Northeast Hungary, he joined the elections to the Hungarian Parliament in 2006 as a direct candidate, but was defeated.

Private

Farkas is married and has three children.

Honors

Farkas was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 30 June 1980.