Yuri Malenchenko is a Colonel in the Russian Air Force. He was born on Dec. 22, 1961 in Svetlovodsk, Ukraine.

In 1983, he graduated from S.I. Gritsevets Kharkov Higher Military Aviation School with a pilot-engineer’s diploma.

In 1993, he graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy.

He was awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation medal, and the National Hero of Kazakhstan medal.

After graduating from Military Aviation School, he served as pilot, senior pilot, and multi-ship flight lead. 

In 1987, he was assigned to the Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City, located just outside of Moscow. From December, 1987 to June 1989, he underwent a course of general space training. 

He was the Commander of the back-up crew for Mir 15.

From July 1 to November 4, 1994, he served as Commander of Mir 16 with Musabayev, Polyakov, Kondakova, Victorenko, and Ulf Merbold. During this flight , he controlled the first manual docking of the Progress.

In September of 2000 he served on the crew of STS-106 which successfully prepared the International Space Station for the arrival of the first permanent crew. The five astronauts and two cosmonauts delivered more than 6,600 pounds of supplies and installed batteries, power converters, a toilet and a treadmill on the Space Station. Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu performed a 6 hour and 14 minute space walk in order to connect power, data and communications cables to the newly arrived Zvezda Service Module and the Space Station. In completing his second space flight, Yuri Malenchenko has logged over 137 days in space, including 3 EVA’s totaling over 18 hours.

Expedition 7 Commander Yuri  Malenchenko and NASA ISS Science Officer & Flight Engineer Edward Lu pose while in training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia for their launch to the International Space Station.

From April 2003 till October 2003, Yuri Malenchenko was assigned as Expedition-7 Commander of the International Space Station. The two person crew launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on April 25, 2003 aboard Soyuz TMA-2 and docked with the ISS on April 28, 2003. Following a week of joint operations and handover briefings, they replaced the Expedition-6 crew which flew back to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft.

On August 10th, 2003, while still aboard the Int'l Space Station Yuri Malenchenko became the first person to marry in space. 

Ekaterina Dmitriev, poses with a life-size cut-out of her bridegroom, Yuri Malenchenko after her wedding. The pair exchanged vows via a NASA satellite hook-up. She is a United States citizen, living in Texas.

The couple were married before family and friends in a private ceremony at Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas where Yuri took part via video link from the international space station.

After his return to Earth from his 6 month stay on the ISS, Yuri and Ekaterina were presented with a gift from HighTechScience.org founder Richard Newman.  Here are the newlyweds with the bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne which we gave them in honor of their history making Earth/Space wedding.