who was the first person to spend a year in space. The Azerbaijan native was born on 22 March 1951 and became a cosmonaut in December 1978. He first served as a flight controller for the Salyut and Mir space stations and a shift flight director at mission control, before he began cosmonaut training in 1983. Four years later he launched into space on the Soyuz TM-4 mission to Mir (becoming the first Dagestan to travel to space) where he started his year-long mission, which included completing a solar array installation, inspecting the station’s exterior, and repairing a telescope. In December 1990, Manarov made a second flight to Mir aboard Soyuz TM-11— a joint mission with a private Japanese television network that paid US$28 million for the first commercial flight to the Soviet space station to put the first journalist (Toyohiro Akiyama) in space. Manarov spent 175 days in space (bringing his total to a record 541 days in space). During his career, Manarov performed seven EVAs for a total of 1.44 days. In 1989 Manarov was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame. He retired from cosmonaut service in 1992 and became director of Smolsat, a Russian space consortium.