November Gallery

Salyut 7 space station in orbit

The Salyut 7 space station photographed in orbit. Attached to the space station at bottom, with the separate solar panels, is the Soyuz T14 ferry spacecraft. Soyuz T14 was launched on 17 September 1985 and carried cosmonauts Vladimir Vasyutin, Alexander Volkov and Georgi Grechko to Salyut 7. Their mission was terminated when Vasyutin became seriously ill, and they returned to Earth on 22 November 1985

© RIA NOVOSTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Crew of Soviet Soyus T12 before launch

The crew of Soviet spacecraft Soyuz T12, photographed before their launch on 17 July 1984. Left to right are Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Svetlana Savitskaya, and Igor Volk. Savitskaya was the second woman to go into space, the first to perform a space walk, and the only woman to have made two space flights. She first went into space in Soyuz T7 on 19 August 1982. Both Soyuz T7 and Soyuz T12 docked with the Salyut 7 space station. During the Soyuz T12 mission, Savitskaya walked in space for 3.5 hours

© RIA NOVOSTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Portrait of Pavel Cerenkov

Pavel Cerenkov, Russian physicist, born Voronezh Guberniya on August 10, 1904, photographed (on right) at the controls of a synchrotron at the Institute of Physics of the Soviet Academy of Science, in 1959. His important discovery in 1934 involved the velocity of high-energy subatomic particles, which is never greater than the velocity of light in a vacuum. Light travelling through water, however, moves more slowly: a high- energy particle moving through water may exceed the velocity of light in that medium. When it does it creates a "wake" of light - termed Cerenkov radiation. For this work, Cerenkov, Frank & Tamm shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in physics

© RIA NOVOSTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY