He flew with Andrian Nikolayev aboard Soyuz 9 in June 1970, setting a record at that time for the longest space flight, nearly 18 days. He later flew on the Soyuz 18 mission in May–July 1975, docking with Salyut 4 to conduct joint experiments. Sevastyanov was selected as a cosmonaut in 1967. He left the cosmonaut programme in 1993, when he was elected to Russia’s Parliament, where he served until 2007. He died on 5 April 2010 after a long illness. During his cosmonaut career, Sevastyanov logged 80 days, 16 hours and 18 minutes in space.