Valeri Nikolayevich Kubasov (Russian: Валерий Николаевич Кубасов; born January 7, 1935 in Vyazniki ) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew on two missions in the Soyuz programme as a flight engineer: Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 19 (the Apollo-Soyuz mission), and commanded Soyuz 36 in the Intercosmos programme. He was also involved in the development of the Mir space station. He retired from the Soviet space program in March 1993 .
Kubasov seems to have cheated death twice during his space career. He was part of the crew that was originally intended to fly Soyuz 2, which was found to have the same faulty parachute sensor that resulted in Vladimir Komarov's death on Soyuz 1 and was later launched without a crew. Later, he was grounded for medical reasons before the Soyuz 11 flight. The back-up crew for that mission was killed when the capsule was accidentally depressurised by a faulty valve.
He was later deputy director of RKK Energia.
