Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin Grammatikopoulos will be welcomed on Friday, 12-1-2018, by the President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopis Pavlopoulos at the Presidential Palace.

He is the first cosmonaut of Greek descent. Fyodor managed to be included in 5 spaceflights.

Yurchikh has logged a total of 537 days on one space shuttle mission in 2002 and three long-duration missions on the International Space Station in 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2017. Yurchikhin ranks seventh in the world for time in space, just ahead of Whitson.

Fyodor was born at January 3^rd 1959 in Batoumi Georgia from parents of Greek – pontiaki descent, Nikolai and Mikroula Grammatikopoulou, who both live in Sindos. In November 1999 he passes the test in order to be a cosmonaut and then he starts his training.

Fyodor Yurchikhin had flown for the first time with the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis in 2002 in a short space mission and in 2007 for the second time in six-month mission to International Space Station, as a commander. He is the 98th cosmonaut in the history of Russia who is a permanent member of the company “Energia, founded by the legendary manufacturer of rocket and spacecraft Sergey Korolev.

He has been awarded with the «Hero of the Russian Federation» metal,thw metal “Order of Friendship”, the NASA metal “ NASA Space Flight Medal” and various other metals from the Cosmonaut Federation.

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