Yury Malenchenko is a Russian astronaut, the Hero of the Russian Federation, the space pilot of the Russian Federation. In his career Yury Malenchenko has made six flights in the outer space and spent altogether 827 days in the orbit. During his flights the astronaut has made 6 extravehicular activities, with one of them having lasted for more than 6 hours.
Yury Malenchenko was born in the city of Svetlogorsk of the Kirovograd Region, the USSR and finished school in the Kharkiv Region in 1978. Right after that he entered the Kharkiv Institute of Radio Electronics, however made another decision soon: the future spaceman decided to go in for piloting. For this purpose he entered the Kharkiv  Gritsevts Aviation Institute in 1979 and graduated from it in five years. After that Yury Malenchenko served in destructive aircraft of the Odessa Military District in different positions.
However soon Yuri Malenchenko's life became closely connected with space. On October 6, 1987 he became a candidate for testing astronauts of the Gagarin Group of Astronauts. On July 21, 1989 to he got qualified as a testing astronaut. His first space flight took place four years later.
For this purpose, Yury Malenchenko studied at the Managing Engineering Faculty of the Zhukovsky Military Aviation Engineering Academy in 1990-1993. At the same time he prepared for space flights. Malenchenko had training in the EO-14 and EO-15 programs in 1993, jointly with G. M. Strekalov, T. A. Musabayev and G. S. Armazov.